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THE VOTER'S HANDBOOK 

Natural Law in the 
Business World 



BY 

WALTER W. FELTS 

Author of "Principles of Science" and "The Circular System of Science 



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PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

m FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
J897 



NATURAL LAW IN THE BUSINESS WORLD 



THE VOTER'S HANDBOOK 

NATURAL LAW IN THE 
BUSINESS WORLD 



SHOWING THAT NATURAL LAW SHOULD BE THE MODEL FOR 

INSTITUTIONS AND LAWS OF GOVERNMENT, FOR THE 

GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL 

COMMERCE, AND FOR THE DIRECTION OF 

GENERAL BUSINESS AND TRADE 



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WALTER W. FELTS 

AUTHOR OF "PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE" AND "THE CIRCULAR 



SYSTEM OF SCIENCE' 



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PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
112 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 

1897 



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Copyright, 1896, by 
Walter W. Felts 



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THE NEW YORK TVPE-SETTING COMPANY 



CONTENTS 



Preface . 
Introductory Remarks 



Circulation 

Circuit of Business— Circulation of Money- 
Government Ownership of Railroads, Telegraph 

Telephone 

Municipal Ownership of Street-car Lines 
Evil Effects of Trusts, Combines, etc. 
" Value Received " a Law of Nature . 
Nature Denies Man the Right to Rule 

True Relations of Land, Labor, and Capital 
The People— the Government . 
Politics Involves all Personal Interests 
The Duty of the People .... 
The People have the Right to Criticize Faithless 
lie Servants 



Bimetallism 

Natural Law and Bimetallism . 

Principle of Bimetallism in Nature . 

Natural Laws the True Model for Human Laws 

Three Laws for Restraint of Greed . 

An Appeal for Patriotism ...» 

A Talk with Voters 

5 



PAGE 

7 



, and 



Pub- 



17 
23 

30 
32 
34 
37 
40 

42 
52 
53 
60 

71 



73 

74 
80 
85 
88 
91 
94 



b CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Beware of Political Deceptions 100 

Demoralizing Effects of Political Evils . . .102 
First Seeds of Anarchy 107 

Free Trade 109 

Natural Law Enjoins Free Trade .... 117 

The Brotherhood of Man ...... 121 

Restrict Immigration . 122 

God in Nature 125 



PREFACE 

The belief that there is a large field of usefulness 
for such a book as I herewith present to all lovers of 
just laws and good government induced me to write 
this condensed treatise on "Natural Law in the 
Business World." If it be well received and there 
seem to be a demand for an enlarged edition^ it will 
be forthcoming. 

I present this advance edition with confidence that 
it will be read and appreciated by all right-thinking 
people. It will be as much to its credit to be de- 
nounced by some as to be commended by others. 
In this sense I can say with the poet Pope, " I write 
for such as it is a credit to please." 

The Author. 



INTRODUCTOItY REMARKS 

He who argues most is least certain of truth in 
what he affirms or denies. He who is certain of the 
truth can present it without argument. On the other 
hand^ error requires much argument in the endeavor 
to prove that it is not error. For this reason I aban- 
doned skepticism long ago. I discovered that it con- 
sists altogether in argument, not to prove anything, 
but to disprove everything. I am no longer skepti- 
cal in anything. Until I am convinced I may be 
uncertain, but not skeptical. I hold judgment in 
abeyance for conclusive proof, and when the evidence 
is all in I then decide positively. If it be error I re- 
ject it, if truth I accept it, and there it ends. 

My process of investigation is not argument. One 
is in no position to argue a matter or question which 
he has not investigated far enough to place himself 
beyond mere uncertainty. 

In writing this little book I have nothing to argue. 
I have some great truths to present, and I present 
them in as clear and concise form as possible. 

Touching political economy, I have read some, 
thought much, and felt, heard, and seen much more. 

9 



10 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 

For years I have lived so close to nature's heart that 
I could feel the warmth of her love and hear her 
rapturous songs of truth. She TDade me look^ and I 
have seen beyond and within her outward forms and 
beheld the unseen reahty of her being. If man may 
be wise^ powerful, just, a mathematician, an astrono- 
mer, a chemist, a geologist, and even a statesman, 
then nature is wisdom, power, justice, mathematics, 
astronomy, chemistry, geology, and true statesman- 
ship. 

Error is nowhere to be found but in man, and this 
is because he abuses his free agency and would be 
wiser than nature. In his egotism and selfishness 
he formulates fine-spun theories and founds institu- 
tions best adapted to the gratification of his lusts. 
He prefers to live far away from nature because 
he loves error— "loves darkness rather than light, 
because his deeds are evil." Man sacrifices every- 
thing to present gratification. Nature beckons to 
him, and he turns his face toward inviting error. 
She pleads with him, and he hearkens to seducing 
error. She afflicts him with the penalties of her 
laws, and he embraces error the more fondly. 

The whole difflculty lies in man's desire to free 
himself from restraints that exact moral purity. 
That is the logic of skepticism. For every well- 
authenticated truth man substantiates he invents a 
thousand groundless theories. More effort has been 
put forth to patch up errors so as to counterfeit a 
single truth than, if rightly directed, would discover 
a thousand genuine truths. Malthus introduced the 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 11 

theory of " the survival of the fittest " in that he 
claimed that population tends to crowd upon sub- 
sistence, and the transparent assumption became a 
cardinal principle of political economy. As if to 
scientifically demonstrate that theory, Darwin, Hux- 
ley, Spencer, and other authorities of our modern 
school of scientists formulated a theory of evolution 
which accounts for the origin of man by bald as- 
sumptions and a process of reasoning which, if pos- 
sible, would give character to sophistry. 

These theories are but the logical and philosophi- 
cal outgrowth of materialism, and materialism is the 
legitimate offspring of egotism and selfishness. The 
unbridled freedom of egotism and selfishness natu- 
rally rebels against the restraints of moral purity. 
To justify the breaking away of these restraints, it 
is necessary to prove that the restraints do not exist 
in fact. And so an unbroken line of theories is 
formulated having in view that end. To prove that 
this assertion is true, I have only to remind the 
reader that science is dominated by skepticism. The 
proudest achievement of accepted science to-day, as 
regarded by the world, is not so much what it is able 
to prove as what it is supposed to be able to disprove. 

Let it be understood that I am not attacking the 
great truths of science that have passed beyond the 
province of discussion. I have reference only to 
theories that have sprung from the one great theory 
of materialism. These theories, like a poisonous 
vine, have wound themselves about the tree of sci- 
ence so skilfully that in many places it is difficult to 



12 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 

distinguisli tho tree and its branches from tlie vine 
and its luxuriant foliage of sophistry. And these 
theories have done and are doing the world incalcu- 
lable harm. In all their tendencies they are debasing j 
they tend to cast men downward rather than to lift 
them upward. Indeed, they are in a large degree 
primarily responsible for all false theories of human 
government. Looked upon as the embodiment of 
true science, and coming with the authority and force 
of their recognized leaders, these theories present 
themselves in evidence that nature is animated by 
blind fatalism and that man is a sort of accidental 
product of the evolutions of accident. This renders 
nature purposeless and man bound by no restraints 
other than those which he himself may authorize 
and enforce. How debasing the belief in such 
theories ! 

And if the mere belief in erroneous theories plays 
havoc with the moral constitution of men, how much 
more can unjust and inhuman institutions and laws 
of government under which men must live under- 
mine manhood, dethrone every ideal of purity, and 
break down all the restraints of lawlessness ! 

This nation, aye, this civilization, is drifting rapidly 
toward that point. It is my belief that there is a 
suflcient number of men, however, who, when they 
know the right and dare to do it, will turn back the 
tide of error upon itself, and roll away the great 
stone of oppression from the sepulcher of human 
liberty, that she may come forth, resurrected to new- 
ness of life. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 13 

If this little book will start a ripple of popular 
sentiment in the great current events that will join 
with the tidal wave of peaceful revolution setting in 
from the West and South, I shall feel that I have 
not lived in vain, even if I should never accomplish 
more. Walter W. Felts. 

New York City, December 7, 1896. 



God give us men ! A time like tMs demands 

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands ; 

Men whom the lust of office does not kill ; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 

Men who possess opinions and a will ; 

Men who have honor ; men who will not lie ; 

Men who can stand before a demagogue 

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking ; 

Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 

In public duty and in private thinking. 

For while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds, 

Their large profession and their little deeds. 

Mingle in selfish strife, lo ! Freedom weeps. 

Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps. 

Dr. J. G. Holland. 



CIRCULATION 

As a term to express a principle in nature, there 
is no word of deeper and broader meaning. I need 
not define the word " circulation." We all know what 
it means in a general way, as, for instance, in its 
application to the air, the blood, etc. We all know 
that animal life is dependent on the circulation of 
the blood, and that the air purifies itself by circula- 
tion ; we know that water becomes stagnant when 
it ceases to circulate. But if we look deeper into 
this subject we shall see that all nature is dependent 
upon the active principle of circulation. Science 
teaches us that there is no such condition as rest; 
that there is nothing in all the universe that is fixed 
or stationary ; it teaches that all things are in per- 
petual motion or circulation. The grandest opera- 
tion of the principle of circulation is the revolution 
of planets a^^ound the sun, and the revolution of suns 
around other larger central suns. So far as the 
astronomer knows, the circulation of the heavenly 
bodies is infinite in space and endless in duration. 

The revolutions of the earth on its axis and around 
the sun give us the perpetual round of day and night 

17 



18 NATURAL LAW 

and tlie seasons. The round of time wrings all the 
changes in nature which come and go in the round 
of birth, growth, death, and decay, corresponding 
to spring, summer, autumn, and winter. These are 
the four annual heart-beats of nature that send the 
vitalizing and death-giving agencies through all her 
arteries of circulation. Out of her dust spring the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms, which grow, mature, 
decline, then decay and return to dust. The renewal 
and reproduction of animal and vegetable life is a 
cyclic action through series of changes from seed to 
seed. Between the vegetable and animal are recip- 
rocal and dependent actions, which form a circuit 
of vitalizing agencies. The wants of one are supplied 
by the wastes of the other, the sustenance of both 
being mutually dependent upon rounds of reciprocal 
actions. The close connections and relations of the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms form a most com- 
plete circuit of life-giving agencies. 

In all nature about us we see the operation of the 
principle of circulation. Moisture is raised from the 
earth by the heat of the sun, and again falls in rain, 
snow, hail, and dew. There is a perpetual round of 
evaporation and precipitation of moisture. 

And then we note the circulation of the waters of 
the earth; the rivers and streams, fed by falling 
snows and rains, pouring into oceans, seas, and lakes 
water that is perpetually drawn from the earth by 
evaporation. The ocean currents perpetually circu- 
late from the polar regions toward the equator, and 
from the equator toward the poles. The polar ice- 



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Explanation op Fio. 1. 

The annexed out (Pig. 1) is from an original drnwing, and illastrates the underlying principle of 
uiroulatiou. The outer circle shows the position of the earth every twenty-four hours in its orbit 
ikTOUud the sun. The seasons — spring, summer, autumn, and winter — arc marked by the accompany- 
ing round of change — birth, growth, death, and decay. This is the great circuit of change around wliii-li 
awing in ceaseless tide all the developments of birth, gn>wth, death, and decay in nature. Under 
this great law all the elements and developments of activities in nature have their cireiiitit and cir- 
culation, some of which are described in the accompanying reading matter. 



NATURAL LAW 19 

fields are broken up by the flow of the warm waters 
of the equator, and the ice-drifts are borne away by 
the polar stream to be melted by the warm ocean 
waters of the equatorial belt. 

The winds and breezes indicate the circulation of 
the air. These, with ocean streams and the tides 
which periodically circulate the oceans of the globe, 
keep the waters of the ocean from becoming stag- 
nant and much of its surface from becoming matted 
by vegetable growth. 

And then, in the animal kingdom we note the cir- 
culation of the blood. Animal life depends upon it 
just as vegetable life depends upon the circulation 
of sap. All animate nature depends upon the circu- 
lation of blood and of sap for existence. This is the 
animating, the life-giving principle of all animate 
nature. 

Now man, with all he is and has, is but a part of 
the vast machinery of nature. Man cannot violate 
the laws of nature with impunity. Nature inflicts 
punishment on all alike for violations of her laws. 
These laws of nature are supreme over all, and 
operative from the minutest detail even to all the 
conditions of the highest civilization attainable. 
Nature's laws are fixed principles and self-operative. 
They govern mind as well as matter, morals as well 
as mechanics. 

There is no escaping or evading the operations of 
natural laws. They may be slow in their operations, 
but they are mathematically sure. The rich and 
powerful among men may ignore or even defy natu- 



20 NATURAL LAW 

ral law in their imaginary greatness, but they will 
find, even as Solomon found, at the end of all the 
vain pomp and glory, nothing but " vanity and vexa- 
tion of spirit." 

An association of millionaires into a powerful 
combine for the purpose of absorbing the wealth of 
the land may fancy that they can override the laws 
of finance, which are governed by natm^al law, but 
they will find, as did Samson, that they cannot escape 
the crash of the temple of state which their greed is 
crowding down upon their own heads. 

And this brings us directly to the subject under 
discussion— financial cii'culation. It is the banding 
together of millionaires into powerful associations 
for the purpose of absorbing the wealth of the coun- 
try that violates the natural law of financial circula- 
tion. So long as money is the legal standard of 
values, so long will its free circulation be absolutely 
essential to general prosperity. 

While the free coinage of silver would temporarily 
vitalize our industries and greatly stimulate trade, 
yet, with the unrestricted operation of powerful cor- 
porations and trusts, the arteries of financial circula- 
tion, which are already tapped, would be kept open, 
from which would continue to flow the life-blood of 
national prosperity. This nation— and, indeed, many 
more— needs free financial circulation much more 
than free coinage of silver. 

To make it clear that our present financial system 
of circulation violates the natural law of circulation, 
let us suppose that the law of the circulation of 



NATURAL LAW 21 

moisture were violated,— that mucli of the moisture 
thrown off by evaporation were in some way ab- 
sorbed,— what would be the effect on vegetable and 
animal life? Drought to the extent of the absorp- 
tion of moisture would follow. There would be little 
rain or snow, and vegetation would be too meager to 
sustain life of animal or man. 

Suppose the circulation of the air were suspended j 
how long would any climate remain healthful f Very 
soon the air would become stagnant and foul, fol- 
lowed by the ravages of disease. 

Suppose the free circulation of the blood were in- 
terrupted by excessive bleeding or by bandaging the 
limbs and forcing the blood to the vital organs; 
the result would be a slow but premature death. 

So with everj^thing in nature that is governed by 
the law of circulation. Any interruption of the 
operation of the law must be attended by unnatural 
and bad results. 

If money is intended for circulation, the law gov- 
erning it is a natural law and cannot be violated with 
impunity. Of course we know that money is in- 
tended for circulation as a medium of exchange for 
convenience only. It saves the farmer much trouble 
he would otherwise have in trading his products for 
groceries, clothing, farming machinery, etc. It saves 
an interminable round of ''swapping," which on a 
large scale would be impracticable, if not impossible. 

But by common consent, expressed by the stamp 
of the government on the coin or paper, money is 
taken in exchange for everything salable, and in turn 



22 NATURAL LAW 

used to purchase everything purchasable. So money- 
is a mere convenience^ and of itself as money has no 
value. To be of any value money must be active— 
pass from hand to hand in exchange for commodities 
and articles of use. When hoarded, and so long as it 
remains so, it can have no possible value whatever. 

What then is wealth? It consists of all things 
that in some way by their use sustain life or add to 
our real comforts, be they physical, intellectual, or 
moral. Money of itself can serve none of these pur- 
poses. By reason of its purchasing power it merely 
represents wealth, and may be used as an exchange 
for things we wish. 

As the medium of exchange money could not fill its 
allotted sphere of usefulness unless it were put into 
circulation. In the natural order of trade every 
man is of necessity a purchaser. Under the mone- 
tary system he must have money with which to 
make purchases. So if we as a people are prosper- 
ous, money must pass freely from hand to hand, and 
enough of it to meet all the requirements of business 
and trade, besides insuring employment to all at a 
reasonable share of the products of their labor. When 
money has done all this it has free circulation and is 
fulfilling its mission of usefulness. 

Now let us see what is the true basis of the free 
circulation of money. 

The first principle consists in its unchecked dis- 
tribution. Now this cannot be if a considerable 
part of it is absorbed by corporations, trusts, syndi- 
cates, middlemen, and stock-jobbers generally. If 



NATURAL LAW 23 

these institutions hoard vastly more than they ex- 
pend, then they are a hindrance to the free distribu- 
tion of money. As, in the case of the circulation of 
moisture, if a considerable part of all the moisture 
evaporated from the earth were absorbed and pre- 
cipitated into the ocean, there would be famine in 
the land, so there is a money famine when the vari- 
ous associations of millionaires absorb much of the 
money and deposit it in banks or use it to widen and 
deepen the sea of their own selfish speculations. 

Such speculations consist largely in impoverishing 
the producing classes by cornering the markets for 
their products. And when the markets are cornered 
the great class of non-producers, or consumers, pay 
the tax thus levied by these money-gamblers. At 
present the producers, the farming classes every- 
where, are becoming impoverished because of low 
prices paid for their products, while the consumers 
of all large cities pay high prices for the same pro- 
ducts. Thus the money and the products of the soil 
are alike cornered, which effectually forces producers 
and consumers alike into a corner. In a word, capi- 
tal has cornered the money, wealth, and products 
of the country, and the people are awaking to find 
themselves '^ in a hole." 

Now let us follow the laws of nature into the busi- 
ness world, and we shall see that there is no break 
in their operations. Beginning 

T n Til • J T Circuit of business — 

where all wealth is produced, we circulation of money. 

notice that the producing classes 

are the great purchasers of the goods and material 



24 



NATURAL LAW 




Explanation of Fig. 2. 
The annexed cut (Fig. 2) is from an original drawing, and 
is aimed to give a general idea of the circuit of business and 
trade, around which active money circulates. To plainly 
illustrate the principle, the manufacturing and producing in- 
terests are set apart in the above illustration, the manufactur- 
ing at the top, and the producing interests— divided into three 
grand divisions, viz., stock-raising, agriculture, and mining— 
at the bottom of the cut. Between the two and across the 
open space the two railroad trains indicate the business cir- 
cuit, one being headed toward the manufacturing, the other 



NATURAL LAW 25 

furnislied by the manufactories and shops. These 
goods and material furnish the main stock in trade 

toward the producing, sections, the direction in which the 
trains are headed indicating a circuit of transportation, trade, 
traffic, and travel. Take your pencil and trace a line in the 
above cut indicated by the direction of the train leaving the 
manufacturing section, and the line will form a loop through 
the producing sections, which, including the trains, forms the 
business circuit. 

Under our present financial system a double standard is 
absolutely essential to a stable currency, that should be free 
from disturbing fluctuations. The most of the gold should be 
at the great manufacturing points, and the large volume of 
silver at the producing points, of the business circuit. Thus, 
with our financial system resting upon two points of support, 
—free coinage of gold and silver at the ratio of 16 to 1,— a 
just equilibrium of currency could be maintained. The ten- 
dency of one to appreciate in value would be held in check by 
the other. If, for instance, from any cause gold should be- 
come scarce, silver would be available to assist in maintaining 
a normal circulation. If, on the other hand, silver should 
become scarce, gold could be used to assist silver at the pro- 
ducing points to carry on local traffic and trade. In either 
case the just equilibrium of the standards would be restored 
speedily— provided always that no powerful combination 
were allowed to destroy the money value of one or the other 
of the metals. After over twenty years' organized fight against 
silver, such a combination of capitalists, aided by legislation 
and finally by the general government, succeeded in forcibly 
removing the silver support of our financial system, effectually 
destroying the equilibrium of the circulating currency and all 
legitimate business and trade as well. When the silver sup- 
port of the business circuit was removed, that point dropped 
about fifty per cent. C50-cent dollar")? and the gold point 
was thereby forced upward at about the same per cent, eleva- 
tion. 



26 NATURAL LAW 

of all mercantile lines. The merchant, whether he 
deals in dry goods, groceries, hardware, farming im- 
plements, or whatever else, understands that his 
stock is the output of factories and shops. All the 
raw material which is made merchantable in manu- 
factories and shops is purchased of the producing 
classes. Thus we see that all business and trade, in- 
cluding farms, mines, factories, and shops of every 
kind and description, form a perfect circuit, and the 
money that keeps the vast machinery of the business 
of the country going passes around this circuit and 
is therefore in circulation. It is in free circulation 
when it follows this fixed circuit of business without 
interruption. 

There is an eternal round of dependencies of one 
upon the other— of the non-producer upon the pro- 
ducer for his products, which are to the non-producer 
the necessaries and luxuries of life, and of the pro- 
ducer upon the non-producer for money, which he 
gives in exchange for the products. Each toils for 
the other— the non-producer for the money which 
he must pay for the products of the producer, and 
the producer for the products which he exchanges 
for the money of the non-producer. 

Now the point in the circuit where, to use an elec- 
trical term, business and trade are generated is where 
all the raw material that makes business and trade 
possible is produced. The products of the soil and 
earth (which includes the mines) constitute the sum 
of the raw material of all wealth. The producing 
classes exchange their raw materials for money and 



NATURAL LAW 27 

then pay out the money for the same materials after 
they have passed through the manufactory, shop, or 
other institution for shaping or refining the same. 
All the expenses of the producer are reckoned as the 
cost of producing the raw material. These expenses 
are the prices the producer pays for the material 
which has come back to him after it has been man- 
ufactured. 

Now, when the prices the producers pay for this 
material remain approximately the same, or station- 
ary, and the prices they receive for the raw material 
decline, they are forced to retrench in their expenses. 
This means that they buy less of the manufactured 
or refined material, which proportionally gluts the 
market for the same. If the prices received for the 
raw material decline below the cost of production, 
the producing classes become impoverished and are 
necessarily light purchasers. This tends to paralyze 
manufacturing industries and materially reduces the 
quantity ot raw material purchased for manufacturing 
purposes. Thus a great per cent, of manufactured 
articles accumulate on the hands of the manufac- 
turer, and the raw material on the hands of the 
producer. 

A panic follows. Labor is thrown out of employ- 
ment by the closing of manufactories, shops, mines, 
and the enforced idleness of the farm. All lines of 
trade in the great business circuit suffer alike. None 
escape but the speculators, who have formed trusts 
and combines in nearly all material, both raw and 
manufactured. By these trusts and combines they 



28 NATURAL LAW 

have taken tlie lion's share of all profits in coin, and 
stored the coin in vaults and banks as a reserved 
fund with which to further enforce their extortions. 

For three years past the prices paid for raw mate- 
rial have been little above, and for some products 
even below, the cost of production. The prices paid 
for most manufactured goods and articles have 
remained during that time about stationary. The 
result is, manufacturers are overstocked with goods 
and the producing classes proportionally overstocked 
with raw material. As all business and trade com- 
plete the circuit of which the producing and manu- 
facturing classes form a part, so they have suffered 
proportional losses. There is a general complaint 
of the scarcity of money and hard times. The cir- 
culating currency has been depleted until there is 
not enough to transact the regular business of the 
country. Thousands are going into bankruptcy. 

Meantime, all the great vaults and banks are full 
of money: sixty-five clearing-house banks of New 
York City now have on deposit $548,038,200 ; other 
cities, $10,000,000, $20,000,000, $50,000,000, $100,- 
000,000 ! Banks and vaults overstocked with money, 
factories and shops overstocked with goods and all 
other articles of trade, and farms overstocked with 
products ! Take the money out of the banks and 
vaults and put it into circulation, and— do you say 
it would bring permanent prosperity to the country 1 
Let us see. How did such vast sums of money get 
out of circulation and into the vaults and banks? 
Who put them there ? Why, speculators, of course. 
They have banded together and with their combined 



NATURAL LAW 29 

capital cornered the markets. All their profits, which 
are enormous and always in coin, go into vaults 
and banks. And so long as these speculators are 
allowed to control the markets, so long will money 
continue to go out of circulation by the millions 
annually. Hence it will be readily seen that, even 
if the speculators would throw every doUar out of 
their vaults and banks into circulation, and stiU re- 
tain control of the markets, it would be only a matter 
of time when they would have every dollar of it 
back again, and the people complaining bitterly of 
another panic. 

These trusts and combines, numbering over one 
hundred and thirty, are composed of a large major- 
ity of the wealthiest men in the United States and 
Europe. They control the markets for the very good 
reason that they control the circulating currency. 
They oppose free coinage of silver because they want 
to keep free money scarce, that they may continue 
their uninterrupted control of the markets. 

It was not merely to defeat the free-silver move- 
ment, however, that they contributed so heavily to 
the campaign fund. It was to defeat the great re- 
form movement. Free silver was only the shadow 
of the ghost that haunted them. They saw in it a 
mighty movement against the unwarranted and un- 
just encroachments of capital on the rights and liber- 
ties of the people. It was a question of life or death 
to these, and so with their millions they deceived, 
purchased, intimidated, and coerced their way to 
victory. 

They now have the machinery of government in 



30 NATURAL LAW 

their own hands— the army, the navy, the United 
States treasury, the banks, with money enough to 
control the legislation and the wealth of the nation. 

Other great checks on the free circulation of money 

are railroad, telephone, telegraph, and street-car cor- 

Government owner- poratlous. Thcsc corporatlous rely 

^^'grapif 'and teie-^^^' ^P^^ *^® gTcat commou peoplc f or 

phone. their vast income. 

Dividends aggregating millions of dollars are de- 
clared by these great corporations annually, and 
every dollar taken out of actual circulation. It re- 
quires no statistics to prove that but a very small 
proportion of the gross earnings finds its way back 
into the legitimate channels of circulation. Why? 
Because these corporations have long since practi- 
cally completed the construction of new roads and 
lines, and are retrenching in their expenditures, even 
to forcing the wages of their employes down to the 
lowest point. When railroads, telephone and tele- 
graph lines were under construction millions of 
dollars were thrown into circulation annually instead 
of being taken out, as is the case at this time. 

True, these are legitimate and necessary conve- 
niences. Rapid travel, transportation, and commu- 
nication are indispensable to the present conditions 
and institutions of civilization. They are, indeed, 
the forerunners of civilization. And yet, when con- 
trolled by men who operate them with a view to 
personal gain only, and in the face and defiance of 
natural laws, they become a curse. To make them 



NATURAL LAW 31 

a blessing it is only necessary to remove the incen- 
tive to personal gain. The railroads, telephone and 
telegraph lines are public conveniences and should 
not be operated for private gain. Being public con- 
veniences, they should be public property, owned, 
controlled, and operated by the general government 
upon the same principle as the United States mail. 
In this way, not only would personal greed be elimi- 
nated from the control and operation of these pub- 
lic conveniences, but the great reduction in fares, 
freights, telephone and telegraph service would 
aggregate an enormous sum annually, a sum that 
under the present system is taken out of actual cir- 
culation. No company of individuals will operate 
railroads, telephone and telegraph lines without re- 
turns in the shape of dividends. Neither would a 
company of individuals operate the United States 
mail without personal gain. If a corporation had 
full charge of the United States mail a two-cent 
stamp would not carry a letter to any part of the 
United States, as it now does. Instead, the cost of 
a letter-stamp would be at least five cents. It will 
be seen that the private sinking-fund in the case of 
corporate control of the United States mail system 
would be enormous, and everybody who bought 
stamps would contribute to that fund, just as every- 
body who pays fares, freights, or sends telephone or 
telegraph messages now contributes to the sinking- 
fund of millionaire stockholders, who compose the 
corporations operating these great public conve- 
niences. By their government ownership, however. 



32 NATURAL LAW 

this vast sinking-fund, which is "net earnings" 
drawn directly from all classes of people, would be 
kept in the legitimate arteries of circulation. 

The municipal ownership of street-car systems is 
equally urgent as viewed from the standpoint of 
national economy. In all the large 
^oTsueetcrufes!'' citics the auuual net earnings of 
street-car corporations are enor- 
mous. The street-car fare of five cents is a small 
amount to almost every one who wishes to ride on 
street-cars, but the grand aggregate of all the five- 
cent fares paid to all the street-car corporations of 
a large city in a single day is a big sum of money. 
And I am sure if that sum had to come out of the 
pockets of fewer people, say at the rate of twenty- 
cent fares, there would be an immediate demand for 
a reduction of fares. As it is, '' what is everybody's 
business is nobody's business." The five-cent fares 
are paid, nobody kicks, and the work of tapping the 
arteries of financial circulation goes steadily on. 

Cities could operate their street-car lines on two- 
cent fares, which would save hundreds of thousands 
of dollars annually to their circulating-fund. And 
the more money in circulation the greater the gen- 
eral prosperity. 

I merely suggest, as others have done, the govern- 
ment ownership of railroads, telephone and telegraph 
lines, and municipal ownership of street-car systems 
as the only feasible remedy for the many evils at- 
tending their corporate or individual control. My 
purpose here is to point out the one great evil— that 



NATURAL LAW 33 

of taking in the shape of fares, freights, and message 
fees vast sums of money out of actual circulation, 
to hoard in banks or to use in so-called speculation, 
which means to open wider the arteries of financial 
circulation where they are already tapped, or to tap 
them in new places. 

Taking money out of circulation is an evil, because 
it tends to impoverish the people and retard the gen- 
eral progress of the country. The purpose involved 
in taking money out of circulation has much to do 
with the enormity of the evil. In the poverty of ex- 
cuses for private ownership of railroads, telephone 
and telegraph lines, and street-car systems, it is 
urged that they are public conveniences and in our 
national and commercial growth have become public 
necessities. 

This much cannot be said, however, in behalf of 
the numerous combines, trusts, etc., that suck the 
financial life-blood of the nation without giving any- 
thing whatever in return. And right here we have 
another law of nature, that lies behind the natural 
law of circulation, which in mechanics is known as 
the law of mechanical equivalents, and in business is 
termed " value received. " A stone thrown upward 
will fall back in the same time, with the same veloc- 
ity, and strike the ground with the same force with 
which it was sent upward. In falling the stone takes 
on the same amount of energy with which it parted 
in going upward. Upon this principle the rigid 
equilibrium of matter and force is maintained. Na- 
ture requires measure for measure— value received. 



34 NATURAL LAW 

in exact quantity. The ocean currents carry the 
warm water of the equatorial belt to polar regions, 
and from the polar regions is returned to the equa- 
tor the exact quantity of water. This is a perpetual 
round and is necessary in order to maintain an equi- 
librium of matter. The stone gathering the same 
quantity of force in falUng that it spends in its 
passage upward is necessary in order to maintain 
the equilibrium of force. The electric current must 
have a return circuit, because the quantity of elec- 
tricity given out at one pole must be returned to the 
opposite pole of the battery or dynamo. This is why 
the electric current always measures the same at 
every point of the circuit. 

This is an inexorable law of nature, and holds in 
commerce, trade, and finance. The law can be vio- 
lated, but not with impunity. An obstruction to the 
circulation of sap in a tree or of blood in an animal 
will show its effects in the abnormal development or 
death of the tree or animal. Obstructions may be 
placed in the way of the circulation of money, but 
the results will inevitably show themselves in panics 
and, unless the obstruction be removed, in national 
disaster and ruin. 

I wish to speak now of things that are the worst 

forms of obstructions to the free circulation of money. 

I have already alluded to them as 

Evil effects of trusts, i • , , • j ji / 

combines, etc. combmcs, trusts, middlemen, etc. 
Railroads give you a ride or send 
your freight, and telephone and telegraph com- 
panies will send your messages when charges are 



NATURAL LAW 35 

paid ; but the trusts and middlemen get your money 
and give you nothing in return. The trust puts up 
the price on coal, kerosene, or other necessaries of 
life, and the consumer pays the tariff out of the money 
in circulation. True, he gets his coal, kerosene, or 
other article, just as the man who pays charges 
gets his ride, his freight shipped, or his telephone or 
telegraph message sent. But there is this important 
difference: the coal, kerosene, or other article can 
be handled successfully and at less cost to the con- 
sumer without the interposition of trusts or middle- 
men. Unless the government operate railroads, the 
telephone, and the telegraph, they of necessity must 
be operated by companies. Not so in handling 
marketable commodities. They could be shipped to 
dealers, who could supply the public, and save to the 
consumers vast sums of money annually now paid 
to swell the hoarded millions of greedy trusts and 
middlemen. They are worse than drones in the 
great hive of human industry, for drones are said to 
be of some use. But these financial leeches sap the 
life-blood of the nation from its arteries of circula- 
tion. They place themselves between the producer 
and the consumer, paying the producer starvation 
prices and charging the consumer "all the traffic 
will bear." In this way the markets are practically 
controlled. The rivalry between the "bulls and 
bears" is but a system of reckless gambling in the 
necessaries of life. The market for products goes 
up or down, depending only on which of these two 
beasts of gambling is most powerful or adroit in 



36 NATURAL LAW 

sdieming. The producer toils on, taking for liis pay 
the pennies that fall from these gamblers' tables as 
pay for his products. The gamblers hoard their 
millions, which^ by scheming they have taken out of 
circulation, making money scarce, which raises its 
purchasing power. In time they have a corner on 
money itself, just as they have at this writing, four 
days before the presidential election of 1896. Such 
harmful institutions of gambling should be abol- 
ished outright. Rigid laws against all manner of 
gambling or wholesale speculating in the necessaries 
of life should be adopted and enforced. Such laws 
should be sweeping in effect. No person or persons 
should be allowed to stand between the producer 
and the consumer and force down the price on the 
one and up on the other. There should be no inter- 
ference with legitimate speculation, but there should 
be laws against extortion. All our laws should be 
based upon natural laws, which exact measure for 
measure, no more, no less. Business and trade 
should be conducted upon the principle and basis 
of value received, which is the counterpart of the 
natural law of measure for measure. Upon this 
principle and basis nature maintains an equilibrium 
of matter and force, and upon this basis alone can 
national and international finance, commerce, and 
trade maintain a just equilibrium. 

Money is a convenient medium of exchange for 
all things purchasable, and as such is the standard 
of values. Therefore, when money, no matter how 
small the amount, changes from one person to aU' 



NATUHAL LAW 37 

other, there should be a return of value to the person 
paying out the money. Putting the proposition 
scientifically, suppose the amount 
paid in this case to be one doUar, " ^fawVf^aJurl'' ^ 
and that one dollar is the unit of 
value. Now the work to be performed by the doUar 
should be equal to the unit of value, and this we 
will call a unit of work. Suppose there is nothing 
returned for the dollar. It has changed hands with- 
out doing any work and is therefore, as the electri- 
cian would term it, on dead-short circuit. A battery, 
dynamo, or any other electrical contrivance does no 
work when on short circuit. So long as the dollar 
circulates without doing its unit of work it is on 
short circuit. In mechanics this means to run ma- 
chinery at full capacity without making it do any 
work. Now there is a unit of work and a unit of 
capacity for work, and these should be equal. The 
unit of work done is termed the mechanical equiv- 
alent of the unit of capacity. AU machinery and 
appliances should be operated upon this principle, 
i.e., the unit of work done should be equal to the 
unit of capacity for doing the work. In finance, let 
the dollar represent the unit of capacity for doing 
work. Its mechanical equivalent is the unit of value 
which should be given in exchange for the unit of 
work. The unit of capacity and the unit of work 
should be alike fixed and unvarying. This is a law 
of nature. The capacity should not be greater than 
the work to be done, nor the work to be done greater 
than the capacity. 



38 NATURAL LAW 

The capacity of the dollar for doing work is regu- 
lated by the mimber of dollars in actual circulation, 
or, in other words, by the law of supply and demand. 
It is apparent, then, that for the dollar to have a 
fixed unit of value there should be an approximately 
fixed number of dollars in actual circulation. 

At this writing the number of dollars in circulation 
has depleted to where a gold dollar has about one 
and four fifths units of capacity for work j that is, 
the purchasing power of a dollar is about four fifths 
greater than it should be. The result is, products 
are cheap because money is dear, which is causing 
bankruptcy among the producers of wealth. Yes, 
we hear of the bankruptcy of producers everywhere, 
and along with it the complaint of consumers living 
in large cities and towns of high prices for products. 
This is easily explained: the middlemen and rail- 
road corporations are between the producers and the 
consumers, taking the lion's share. The railroads 
have a corner on transportation, and the middlemen 
have a corner on the markets. If the consumer 
could purchase products direct from the producer at 
the prices he now has to take, the cost of living to 
the consumer would be reduced about one half. If, 
on the other hand, the consumer had free access to 
the producer and paid him the prices for his products 
he now pays for them, the producer would soon be 
able to pay off the mortgage on his farm. 

If the unit of value or purchasing power of the 
dollar is nearly double what it should be because of 
the scarcity of dollars in actual circulation, then to 



NATURAL LAW 39 

increase the number of dollars in circulation would 
lower the purchasing power of the dollar to the 
normal merit. It would ; but the unit could not be 
maintained while the railroads continued to hold a 
corner on transportation and the middlemen a corner 
on the markets, unless the number of dollars in cir- 
culation were increased at the ratio of the number of 
dollars hoarded by railroad corporations and middle- 
men. A moment's thought right here will convince 
any one that the free coinage of silver without free 
circulation would be no lasting remedy for financial 
difficulties and panics. Much more money would be 
thrown into circulation and there would be an era of 
more prosperous times, but with the depletion of 
currency continuing, and increasing with the increas- 
ing wealth and arrogance of railroad corporations 
and of middlemen, the era of prosperity would be 
brief, terminating in another mighty panic. 

As a matter of fact, the government ownership of 
railroads, telephone and telegraph lines, and the abo- 
lition of trusts, combines, all wholesale speculations 
in the necessaries of life, and the restoration of silver 
to its proper place with gold, would settle all finan- 
cial difficulties. Then the cost of transportation 
would be greatly reduced, and all products would 
find their way through a free market to the con- 
sumers ; and, what is more, the vast sums of money 
hoarded by railroad, telephone and telegraph cor- 
porations, trusts, combines, etc., would soon be 
thrown back into active circulation. The dollar, 
whether silver or gold, would then have its true unit 



40 NATURAL LAW 

of value, and the nation would be financially inde- 
pendent and prosperous. 

Nature smiles witli plenty and showers her choicest 
gifts everywhere. If the people, by improvidence or 

a failure to assert their rights, al- 
"ihe^rfghrto ruTe^" low thcsc gif ts to fall iuto the lap 

of luxury, then nature is not to 
blame. She provides abundance, and every human 
being is entitled to a just share. Call this socialism 
if you will, but there is no denying the great truth. 
The theory of special privileges grew out of human 
greed for property or power or for both. No man 
has the natural right to abu.se authority which he has 
over his fellow-men, any more than he has to abuse 
his right to property by oppressing others. Men 
may have the divine right to lead or, what is much 
the same, serve, but no man ever had, nor ever will 
have, the divine right to rule. Moses led, and a 
greater than he proclaimed this great underlying 
principle of human liberty, which is recorded in 
Mark x. 42-45 : " But Jesus called them to Him, and 
saith unto them. Ye know that they which are ac- 
counted to rule over the G-entiles exercise lordship 
over them; and their great ones exercise authority 
upon them. But so shall it not be among you : but 
whosoever will be great among you, shall be your 
minister : and whosoever of you will be the chief est, 
shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man 
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
to give His life a ransom for many." 



NATURAL LAW 41 

Moses was given the Ten Commandments, which 
conform perfectly to natural law. Moses was not 
above the law of the Ten Commandments. It has 
been given to no man to be above and independent 
of the laws which govern his subjects. There have 
been and are rulers, but they have been and will con- 
tinue to be dethroned until human liberty will be 
universal. Nature has set her seal of condemnation 
against arbitrary forms of government where rulers 
are not subject to the laws they enforce on others. 
Moses was subject to the law of the Ten Command- 
ments, and Jesus Christ was subject to all the laws 
of Christianity. And I speak reverently when I say 
that God holds the laws of the universe and of His 
being inviolate. It may be said that by these laws 
He governs and is governed, and the Bible assures 
us that by obedience to these laws we may have 
fellowship with Him, which shows that the Creator 
is not above the creature when the creature conforms 
to the laws of the Creator. 



TRUE RELATIONS OF LAND, 
LABOR, AND CAPITAL 

A BODY at rest remains at rest unless acted on by 
some external force. 

This is the law of inertia and is a portion of New- 
ton's fundamental law of motion. Common observa- 
tion teaches us that with reference to any portion of 
earth and all bodies on its surface this law of inertia 
holds good. The solid body of the earth, its seas, 
oceans, rivers, and land, would remain motionless 
and changeless forever unless acted on by external 
forces. The force of the winds, acting upon the 
waters of the seas and oceans, rolls them into moun- 
tain billows, and the force of the volcano and earth- 
quake raise and sink islands and continents, while 
the physical forces of man, directed by the will, raise 
the dead materials of the earth into shapely forms 
for human habitations. The clay of which the brick 
is formed, the stones of the vast quarries, the metals 
adapted to the uses of the architect and machinist, 
and the forests that furnish the material for building 
and architectural finish, would all remain shapeless 

42 



NATURAL LAW 43 

in their places forever unless acted on by the forces 
put into operation by the human will. The hands 
are the instruments upon which these forces act, and 
in obedience to the will, under the control of pur- 
poses, the hands develop the raw materials of nature 
into all the various articles and things that bear 
the trade-mark of human design and ingenuity. The 
processes of development are termed labor, and all 
material growth and advancement are said to be the 
products of labor. 

Labor, then, lies next to nature and should rank 
first on the human side in the principles of political 
economy. On nature's side is land, which holds 
in store all products and resources, and all the laws 
and conditions governing their proper development 
and use. 

Having cleared away the rubbish of argument that 
deals with the confused and complicated effects of 
the operation of human institutions and laws, which 
are established and perpetuated in violation of natu- 
ral law, we can now see our way clearly to the first 
cause of all material advancement and the germ idea 
of politico-economic science. 

I have dealt at some length elsewhere with the 
subject of land, showing in general outline the wise 
economic system in the natural formation and de- 
posit of its wealth of resources as proved by their 
perfect adaptation to all the possible requirements 
of the human family for all time. We will now con- 
sider the processes of the development of the natu- 
ral resources of the earth, beginning when they yet 



44 NATURAL LAW 

awaited the magical touch of labor to bring them 
from their hiding-place. 

We have seen that a body has no power of itself 
to move, and that, nnless acted on by some external 
force, it will remain at rest and motionless forever. 
No matter whether that body be a stone, a forest of 
trees, a nngget of gold, a body of coal, or nuts, ber- 
ries, and fruits that grow wild in the tropics, the 
difference in the immediate value of all these con- 
sists in the amount of labor required to make them 
useful. The nuts, berries, and fruits of the tropics 
require no preparation, yet their use involves the 
labor of gathering them. The coal involves the 
greater labor of gathering and of the preparation of 
stoves and furnaces for burning. The rock requires 
the labor of lifting from the quarry and shaping and 
placing in building. Great labor is required to re- 
duce the forest to lumber suitable for building pur- 
poses, while to insure the usefulness of the nugget 
of gold the ingenuity and skill of labor must be ex- 
pended in perfecting delicately formed and adjusted 
machinery by which it is minted, when it becomes 
a standard of value. These things, and, indeed, all 
things in nature, are valueless unless acted on by the 
external force of labor. Values lie latent in labor 
and spring into being at its touch. The tropical 
nuts, berries, and fruits have no value to the native 
unless he expend the labor of gathering them for 
sustenance. They become valuable when gathered 
for use, but labor precedes and is indispensable to 
their use j hence their value inheres in labor. This 



NATURAL LAW 45 

becomes quite apparent when we come to consider 
the value of a piece of raw material, say of cotton. 
What is the basis of estimate of its value ? Unless 
raw cotton pass through some process of manufac- 
ture by which it is woven into cloth or formed into 
padding for quilts, cushions, etc., it has no value. It 
is because it can be used for these purposes that it 
is valuable ; so its value is entirely dependent upon 
the labor required to put it in shape to be used. If 
it is urged that the manufacturing machinery per- 
forms the greater portion of the labor, I shall insist 
that without labor the machinery would be of no 
more value than were the metals of which it is 
composed before they were mined from the rocks. 
Couple with the labor of operating the factory the 
succession in the various processes of labor required 
to first dig from the rocks the metals of which the 
machinery is composed ; the labor expended in trans- 
porting the ore to the foundry, in melting and mold- 
ing the parts, and in finishing in the machine-shops ; 
the transportation of the parts to the place where 
the factory is to be erected ; and, finally, the putting 
into place the parts which when finished form the 
complete manufacturing plant 5 and when we have 
added the labor of digging and the transportation of 
the coal from which the power for the plant is gen- 
erated, we have the sum total of the labor required 
to change the cotton from conditional to actual 
value. The profits derived from the various stages 
of labor above enumerated, including the profits de- 
rived from the production of the cotton itself, are 



46 NATURAL LAW 

profits on the labor employed. The capital involved 
is invested in facilities to get the greatest possible 
results from the labor employed, and these facilities 
are all the creation of labor. Hence aggregations of 
capital are aggregations of the profits on labor. 

Going back to first principles, we see that nature 
has done her part faithfully and well, and leaves 
man to perform his part according to certain definite 
laws and conditions which she has established. Her 
conditions or resources are regulated by the law of 
distribution, which precludes the possibility of natu- 
ral monopolies. The limit of her resources is cir- 
cumscribed only by the capacity of the earth. No 
country has the monopoly of resources. They are so 
distributed that one country must be dependent upon 
another for products and things that belong exclu- 
sively to it. This causes a state of international 
dependencies, which necessitates international com- 
merce and trade. In the natural order of things, one 
nation cannot reduce another to a condition of servi- 
tude. The condition of master and servant, employer 
and employed, from individuals to nations, is the 
direct outgrowth of human institutions and laws, 
which have no precedent or justification in natural 
law. "All men are created free and equal" is the 
cardinal principle of human liberty and is backed 
by the law of universal hberty in nature. 

The water, land, and air are made free for fishes, 
beasts, and fowls. They were all created free and 
equal. The natural resources of the earth are theirs 
in common, and no species among them all is en- 



NATURAL LAW 47 

dowed by nature with exclusive privileges. By rea- 
son of physical power or courage, the whale may 
be styled the king of the waters, the lion the king of 
beasts, and the eagle the king of fowls, but nature 
has given to them no scepter of authority by which 
they may subjugate their kind or deny to the weak- 
est in the scale of creation the right to the means of 
independent subsistence. Upon this natural right 
rests the cause of human liberty. Servitude inevi- 
tably results from the subversion of this right— the 
right to the means of independent subsistence. And 
servitude is an enforced, and not a natural, condi- 
tion. Men serve masters not necessarily because 
their masters own them as property. This is an ex- 
pensive and unnecessary form of servitude or slavery. 
Chattel slavery involves needless cares and responsi- 
bilities. Such slaves must be cared for when sick, 
and a vigilance must be kept lest they escape and 
gain their freedom. The owner is also responsible 
for their acts, just as he is responsible for trespass 
and damage if his horses, cows, or hogs destroy prop- 
erty belonging to others. 

Not so with that form of slavery in which the vic- 
tims stand between starvation and toil for those who 
reap what should be the reward of their labor. There 
is now no escape from this form of bondage.* True, 

* Until aggregated capital got control of the wealth and 
circulating currency of this country there was some recogni- 
tion of the rights of the employed. Now labor is regarded as 
chattel, subject to the so-called law of supply and demand, 
which is the natural law of supply and demand complicated 



48 NATURAL LAW 

the liberty of changing masters is granted, but this 
often means a cbange from bad to worse. When 
out of employment their labor is on the market that 
tends to the lowest rather than the highest bidder, if, 
indeed, there be a bid at all. There are no bidders 
now for the labor of tens of thousands in this coun- 
try, who are somehow existing in enforced idleness. 
Cut off from means of independent subsistence, men 
must serve whom, when, and where they can, and 
when they cannot they become unwilling vagrants. 
Going back once more to first principles, we find 
that there was a time when all men were in fact 
free and equal, a time when no man usurped the 
authority to deny to other men the right to the 
means of independent subsistence. That order of 
things was changed, and all subsequent history re- 
cites the oft-repeated story of " man's inhumanity to 
man." That change did not come about in the natu- 
ral order of things. If that order had been main- 
tained by all the institutions of organized society 
and government to the present time, such terms as 
"master" and "employer" would have been un- 
known. That order was reversed, however, by the 
early adoption of a monopoly rather than a coopera- 
tive system. It began when greed got the mastery 
of men, who usurped authority, through which they 
secured the exclusive privilege of unrestricted owner- 

and perverted by the manipulations of greed out of all recog- 
nition. And so labor has lost all the dignity and liberty it 
once enjoyed, and, unless the compensation reaches the plane 
of "salary" or "fees," it is now considered menial. 



NATURAL LAW 49 

ship. The arbitrary authority to rule was termed 
" the divine right of kings/' and upon that assumed 
right hereditary offices were created, and filled by 
those who, by virtue of their offices, should enjoy 
special and exclusive privileges. Among the privi- 
leges enjoyed by this titled class was the right to the 
ownership of vast landed estates, which necessarily 
involved the servitude of the many who were thus 
cut off from the means of independent subsistence. 
The only access to the soil was in tenantry, and the 
tenant was and is the servant, and the landlord the 
master. The products of his toil are taken in rent, 
which is only a term for one method of creating capi- 
tal from the products of labor. The other method 
consists in the assessment levied upon the labor of 
those who are employed by reason of their utter 
dependence for employment upon the owners of the 
means of subsistence. These are the two methods 
of creating capital, and they result, directly or in- 
directly, from land monopoly, which, as landlordism, 
has been and continues to be an underlying principle 
of the institutions of human government. So firmly 
rooted became the operation of that prir^iple that 
the indiscriminate monopoly of land, with all its 
attendant evils, was finally regarded as the necessary 
and unavoidable outgrowth of all organized society 
and government. We have become so familiar with 
land and all other species of monopoly, with the 
accompanying system of the employment of labor 
and the impression that all profits are somehow 
derived from the things in which investments are 



50 NATURAL LAW 

made, that it is not easy to realize the fact that 
primarily all aggregations of wealth or capital are j 
aggregations of the profits on labor. | 

To make this apparent it is only necessary to point 
ont that nnder a cooperative system wealth could 
not aggregate, simply because all men would get the 
products of their own labor. Under such a system 
there could be no monopolies, for the very evident 
reason that monopolies are possible only through 
the instrumentality of wage-earners, without whose 
labor capital could find no profitable investment. 
Labor is not only " the strong right arm of capital," 
but it is both arms, hands, feet, body— all, abso- 
lutely all there is of active capital. A body— of 
land, of mineral ore, of anj^thing valuable that can 
be mentioned— at rest remains at rest unless acted 
on by the external force of labor. If that labor can 
be bought and used by some one who has secured 
the exclusive right to the body of land, mineral ore, 
or other valuable thing, then, everything else being 
equal, it becomes profitable to the extent of the labor 
expended, for which he receives the profits. These 
profits, he ignorantly claims, are on his investment, 
never realizing that the means with which he made 
the investment were the creation of labor. As all 
values are the creation of labor, so all profits derived 
from enhanced valuations are necessarily profits on 
labor. So no matter if the capital of the one who 
makes the investment comes to him through inheri- 
tance, it nevertheless represents just so much of 
profits on labor stored in the successive stages of 



NATURAL LAW 51 

accumulations by his ancestors. No matter how or 
when capital is or was accumulated, it all represents 
the profits on labor stored in process of accumula- 
tion. It may be in the hands of a number of men 
by reason of their cooperative labor, or in the posses- 
sion of one man, who has reaped the profits of the 
labor that otherwise would have been cooperative j 
in either event the principle is precisely the same, 
namely, that capital is the profits on labor stored in 
process of accumulation. In the rounds or evolu- 
tions of the various processes of labor, wealth is 
evolved, and aggregates in the hands of those who 
control labor. If each individual controls his own 
labor he receives the products thereof, to which, ac- 
cording to natural law, he is entitled. If, on the 
other hand, labor is controlled by a few, its products 
(wealth) aggregate in their hands, and are termed 
capital. 

Reduced to first principles, we find that for capital 
to aggregate it is first necessary for a few men to 
control the labor of many, which is done by cutting 
off all access to the means of independent subsis- 
tence. The process is the monopoly of the soil and 
the consequent monopoly of its products. The utter 
dependence of the many upon the few results from 
the operation of arbitrary and unnatural human in- 
stitutions, which create monopolies and which are 
and have been essentially alike in all governments, 
the world over, from the beginning of organized 
society, Malthus made the important discovery that 
population tends to crowd upon subsistence, but he 



52 NATURAL LAW 

evidently failed to make the much more important 
one that that tendency is entirely due to the opera- 
tion of unjust human institutions already pointed 
out, and not to natural causes. For evils do not 
spring from natural causes; they are always and 
everywhere the legitimate fruits of violations of 
natural law. 

It will be claimed that remedies I suggest cannot 

be reached by legislation, because such legislation 

would interfere with vested rights 

"^^^ovemm^t. ^ and tlicrc would be great opposi- 
tion to such measures. There would 
undoubtedly be great opposition to measures for the 
curbing of a spoils system, but the opposition would 
come from the privileged classes who profit by the 
system. It would be urged by those classes that the 
purchase of railroads, for instance, would bankrupt 
the government. 

There is a general misapprehension of what reaUy 
constitutes the government. Most people seem to 
regard the government as an institution above and 
independent of the people. They do not seem to 
realize that all the just powers of the government 
are derived from the consent of the governed ; that 
those whom they elect to all offices, from President 
down to the least, are elected to do the will of the 
people and are therefore public servants ; that the 
duties of these public servants are defined by the 
Constitution and laws, and emphasized by their sol- 
emn oath of of&ce; that their official duties are, or 



NATURAL LAW 53 

should be, determined by the wishes of the people 
who elect them and pay for their services ; that no 
public servant has a right to arrogate to himself the 
prerogative of rulership, or to set his personal opinion 
above the will of the people j that the salaries of all 
of&cials and all expenses of government are defrayed 
by the people in the shape of the various forms of 
taxation. 

Now, therefore, it appears that it is not for any 
official or specially privileged class to say that any 
enterprise or undertaking is too expensive for the 
government. It is the sole right of the people to 
determine all matters of government policy and set 
the bounds to the amount of taxation they are willing 
to pay. 

If the people wish to own and operate the railroads 
and make them an institution of government as they 
have the mail system, then who shall interfere and 
say that it would be too expensive ? or who shall say 
that it would be unjust to confiscate and pay for 
public conveyances and appropriate them for public 
use? Who shall say that the public has not the 
right to own and operate all public conveyances and 
conveniences ? How can this be said in the face of 
the unjust and exorbitant rates paid by the public 
to private corporations for the use of public convey- 
ances and conveniences 1 

As to bankrupting the government, if the slow 
process of paying in fares and freights millions of 
dollars annually as clear profits to private railroad 
corporations will not bankrupt the people, it is evi- 



54 NATURAL LAW 

dent that the payment of the sum of these profits for, 
say, ten or twenty years at once and outright for the 
raih'oads would even reduce the chances of bank- 
ruptcy. And at the expiration of the ten or twenty 
years, when the government bonds for the indebted- 
ness shall have been paid and it is found that the 
milHons spent have purchased the perpetual right to 
the use of railroads by the public, then would the 
people realize the full force and efficacy of their great 
stroke of national economy. For the millions paid 
out they would have the railroads, whereas if they 
pay them out as fares and freights the money goes 
into the vaults and safes of private corporations, 
representing so much clear gain to the corporations 
and as much loss to the people. 

The government ownership of railroads is a propo- 
sition that capitalists would oppose, and ostensibly 
on economic grounds. They would oppose bonding 
the government for the vast sum required to purchase 
the raih'oads, and would strive to terrorize the people 
with the scarecrow of bankruptcy j but the political 
record of the past two or three years shows that capi- 
talists did not hesitate to bond the government for 
hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for the mis- 
takes and extravagance that have characterized the 
control of affairs of government for many past ad- 
ministrations. These millions must be paid by the 
people, and in the record of the expenses of govern- 
ment will stand as dead loss to them. 

There is absolutely nothing in the way of the gov- 
ernment ownership of railroads but the will of the 



NATURAL LAW 55 

people. Theii' decision would settle that question, 
as well as the question of government ownership of 
telephone and telegraph lines, the suppression of land 
monopoly^ trusts, and all gambling in the necessaries 
and comforts of life. It is not only the prerogative 
of the people to do these things, but it is their duty. 
To put an end to all the evils of government would 
be but to act in accordance with "the first law of 
nature," which is seK-preservation. It is the plain 
duty of the people to protect themselves as well as 
their property. 

In a republic like our own the moral, social, politi- 
cal, and financial dependencies and connections are 
interminable. None can fully escape the effects of 
evils that work moral, social, political, or financial 
injury to any considerable number of people. For, 
as a rule, evils are not sectional ; they are dovetailed 
into society, politics, and finance, and invariably 
tend to sap the moral foundations of government, 
by which they thrive and with which they fight down 
all opposition; and these are deception, ridicule, 
fraud, and force. The first of these is sophistry, by 
which error is adroitly substituted for the truth, or 
the truth perverted into the appearance of error. 
The second is derision, which is a powerful weapon, 
as it can alwaj^-s be effectively used by attacking 
personal pride and vanity. The third is bribery and 
the promises of office or position. The fourth is bull- 
dozing, the boycott, intimidation, and coercion. 

It is because men know that these weapons wiU be 



56 NATURAL LAW 

used that they refuse to assert themselves against 
the inroads of public evils. Some men have dared 
to favor the government ownership of railroads, 
telephone and telegraph lines, but the weapon of 
ridicule has been applied so vigorously that the 
cause has gained comparatively few advocates. All 
these weapons are used in the defense of trusts, com- 
bines, land monopoly, etc. 

How, then, can great evils be curbed or abol- 
ished? This question has been asked throughout 
all ages, but has never yet been experimentally an- 
swered. It involves the greatest and gravest social 
and political problem, and few there are who believe 
that it will ever be solved ; and it must be confessed 
that the grounds for doubt are well taken. I have 
little hope that mankind, alone and unaided, will 
ever found a government whose institutions will be 
free from the contaminations of evils. So long as 
men yield to the evil instincts of their natures, so 
long will the evils of the individual aggregate in 
the association of individuals which is society; for, 
after all, the character of society depends upon the 
character of the individuals of which it is composed. 

But the mistake of tolerating social and political 

evils is not so much the fault of moral weakness as it 

is a lack of proper education. The 

persinarinteTIlts. whole qucstiou of social aud politi- 
cal purity, while it involves moral 
purity, is largely a question of laudable self-interest. 
Our highest conception of self-interest dictates a 
course, in social and political as weU as in the indi- 



NATURAL LAW 67 

vidual life, that is at once free from all evils that 
can bring nothing but injurious effects. It dictates 
rather a course characterized by temperance and the 
adoption of the golden rule in all the practical 
affairs of life. And the golden rule itself is a 
natural law, since it expresses an eternal principle 
of justice. Tt is also a sublime conception of self- 
interest, sinoe a society or government founded upon 
that one rule of action would enjoy the most perfect 
preservation of the rights and interests of each and 
all. Such a society or government would certainly 
enjoy a perfect immunity from evils. Self-interest 
alone would dictate their exclusion. The education 
of the people of such a society or government would 
be such as to fully enlighten them on the disastrous 
effects of evils, and, if from no other cause than the 
desire to promote their own best interests, they 
would repel all evils at the first suggestion of their 
approach. 

An appeal for social and political purity, then, is 
an appeal to the self-interest of all classes of people, 
from the pauper to the multimillionaire. I some- 
times think the millionaire bears the greatest burden 
of all human responsibility : in his mind, the burden 
of worrying over interminable business complica- 
tions ; on his heart and conscience, the burden of the 
injustice his business methods too frequently work 5 
and in his judgment, the burden of consciousness 
that all with him is, after all, only " vanity and vex- 
ation of spirit." This was the bitter experience of 
him who was the wisest and we?^"^^iest of his day and 



58 NATURAL LAW 

age. After experiencing the intoxicating effects of 
boundless wealth and power, even Solomon, in all 
his glory, cried out at last, in the anguish of bitter 
remorse and disappointment, " All is vanity and vex- 
ation of spirit." I have known many who enjoyed a 
large measure of happiness in comparative poverty, 
but I have known or heard of but one happy 
millionaire. Then it were better for the milUonaire 
that he remove from himself all that robs him of 
that greatest of all human blessings— happiness. 
Blinded by his lust for gold, he does not realize 
while in the heat of his struggles for the accumula- 
tion of wealth that he is rapidly disqualifying him- 
self for all real enjoyment. He does not seem to 
know that he is passing through a hardening process 
by spurning sentiment and crushing out all the 
higher sensibilities of his nature. He may have 
never thought that real enjoyment comes, not in the 
mere possession of things we call wealth, but in their 
proper use. Indeed, the fierce desire for wealth 
seems to hold its subject by a sort of hypnotic spell, 
which subdues the wiU and drives the willing cap- 
tive through aU his arduous and fruitless toil of 
years. Some, and it may be many, are not freed 
from the spell until, like Solomon, they drink the 
bitter dregs that ever lie at the bottom of the cup 
from which the rich must drink, and then at last, in 
Solomon's galling words, they cry, "All is vanity 
and vexation of spirit." I appeal to the inner con- 
sciousness of the millionaire for an admission of the 
truth of what I have here written. 



NATURAL LAW 59 

And yet I would not be understood as standing 
opposed to the just accumulation of wealth. An 
ample competency is desirable and could never inter- 
fere with the rights of any. But I stand on the 
basis of natural laws backed by all experience when 
I say that all who strive for more than an ample 
competency are pursuing a course that is opposed to 
their own best interests. 

If we turn to all other classes of people— the 
struggling, toiling millions— and ask them, why they 
struggle and toil, some of them wiU tell us that 
they are in pursuit of wealth, while the vast major- 
ity will declare that it is because of sheer necessity. 
Ask them why it is a necessity, and they will answer 
that others have possession of all the money and 
wealth and that they are compelled to toil for them 
for subsistence. Ask them if they have any choice 
in the matter, and they will answer no. Ask them 
if they have a hope of sometime owning a home or 
having a competency, and you will astonish them. 
Ask them why others have all the wealth and money, 
and they cannot tell you. If you suggest to them 
that it is all their own fault, that they as citizens 
and voters have permitted various usurpations on 
their rights and have consented to the establishment 
and promotion of evils that are the direct cause of 
all their poverty, some, more ignorant, will doubt 
the truth of your statement, while others will admit 
that they know it, but affirm their helplessness in 
the matter. Few there are in all this nation who, 
knowing of the evils that corrupt society and politics 



60 NATURAL LAW 

and cause all the poverty and misery in the nation, 
know that it is by the consent of the people that 
they exist. The consent may consist in a passive ac- 
quiescence in, or time-serving obedience to, existing 
institutions. But in a nation of citizens and voters, 
whose will is the law, subserviency is consents 

I lay the blame at the door of every intelligent 

citizen and voter. He should know that every 

condition and institution of evil 

The duty of the • • j. i • i l • j. i. 

people. IS agamst his own best mterest 

and that it is his duty as well 
as his right to abolish it. He should know that 
it is a matter of self-defense as well as the defense 
of others, and that all voters, individually and col- 
lectively, are bound by all the ties of citizenship and 
of loyalty to their own interests to strike down the 
evils that corrupt society, politics, and government. 

Let no man be so foolish as to believe that he is 
out of the reach of public evils, for even the rich are 
affected by them. Especially are they, sooner or 
later, affected by the evils they inflict upon the peo- 
ple. History tells us that time and again they have 
returned to them in the forms of devastating wars 
and revolutions^ 

The human family is bound together by mutual 
ties of one common interest as closely as are mem- 
bers of one body. Take, for example, your own body. 
If you but injure one member, if you but crush one 
bone, every nerve of your body will thrill, every 
fiber of your being will suffer in unison. The life- 
blood circulating through the veins and arteries will 



NATURAL LAW 61 

carry the tidings of distress from the injured part to 
all other parts of the body, and all suffer in turn^ 
And so with the human family. We are members 
one of another and mutually dependent upon one 
another. " The hand cannot say to the foot, I have 
no need of thee ; " neither can the rich say to the 
poor, " I have no need of thee." While some parts 
of the body are not so comely as other parts, yet 
they are equally useful, and if the uncomely parts 
suffer, so also must the comely suffer with them. 
And so the rich cannot oppress the poor and cause 
them to suffer without suffering in turn. As the 
blood carries the injury to all parts of the body, so 
the life-giving principle that flows through the tide 
of humanity will bring back upon the oppressor the 
result of his oppression. 

Blinded as they are by greed and lust for power, I 
can understand why the rich oppress the poor and 
are indifferent to all their demands for justice and 
fair play. But I cannot comprehend the depths of 
selfishness of men who ai-e fairly prosperous and who 
side with the rich in their policy of oppression. The 
depths of their folly in resting in the false security 
of the belief that they are so far above the poor that 
they are beyond the reach of oppression are simply 
incalculable. They should know that as the rich 
become richer the poor become poorer, and that the 
ranks of the poor are continually recruited from 
among those who are falling on every hand before 
the fierce exactions of combined wealth. From 1890 
to 1896, both inclusive, the sifting process of our 



62 NATURAL LAW 

financial system lias made tramps of thousands of 
laborers, and laborers of thousands of men who had 
homes or who were engaged in lucrative businesses 
or professions. Farmers have become homeless and 
penniless, and their lands have invariably gone 
into the hands of moneyed men or banking institu- 
tions. Merchants and business men have failed, and 
their places have been taken by large moneyed con- 
cerns. Vast moneyed interests are fast absorbing 
the trade of the country, and the time seems to be 
at hand when the independent business men in our 
large cities who are not backed by capital will be 
forced out of business by the fierce competition of 
larger moneyed concerns. 

More than fifteen years ago Henry George, that 
fearless champion of human liberty and one of the 
world's most gifted thinkers and writers, startled 
the world with his aggressive announcement that 
^^ the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer," 
and in the face and opposition of the rich laid the 
blame at their doors. The events from the time that 
the world first read " Progress and Poverty '' down 
to the present have strengthened the unanswerable 
argument of Mr. George. Indeed, he did not then 
see or picture the worst. And it is well that he did 
not. Had he foreseen the presidential election of 
1896, which resulted in the political domination of 
plutocracy, his mighty genius would have lacked the 
enthusiasm essential to the work of a great reformer. 
Had he seen the methods and means employed to 
bring about that result, how could he have volun- 



NATURAL LAW 63 

tarily enlisted in what now seems the thankless and 
fruitless work of reform ? 

Oh, the appalling spectacle of American citizens 
falling prostrate before the plutocratic weapons of 
deception, ridicule, fraud, and force ! And that, too, 
when our election laws guarantee the secrecy of the 
ballot ! The cowardice that would cringe and cower 
under the display of these weapons when human lib- 
erty is at stake is unworthy of the slave to whom lib- 
erty is but a dream, much more of the men who boast 
that they are citizens and rulers of the greatest re- 
public on earth. Away with such boasting! Let 
neither these, nor those who ignorantly serve the 
money power with all the kingly wealth of their 
citizenship, boast, but rather let them hide their 
heads in shame when the sad story is told of the 
defeat of popular government in 1896. 

These are the elements that most threaten the 
perpetuity of our free institutions— the cowardice 
and ignorance of voters. I had thought to favor 
the adoption into law of the initiative and referen- 
dum, by which the republic would easily change from 
a representative to a popular form of government, 
but this reform can come only through the political 
education of the voters. 

The policy and course of the administration that 
will expire on the 4th of March, 1897, has proved 
that representatives may easily become dictators and 
oppressors. The President, with his unrestricted 
power of appointment to and removal from offices 
of great honor and trust, may use that power as a 



64 NATURAL LAW 

lash to compel an army of official appointees to side 
with and assist Mm in the nefarious work of under- 
mining the liberties of the people. Backed by the 
combined wealth of the nation, and with the army 
and navy at his command, he can disregard laws 
that hamper his dictatorship, violate others by un- 
warranted federal interference, and by persistently 
degrading silver from its proper money standard 
deplete the currency, which impoverishes the people ; 
heavily bond what is left of the wealth of the nation 
to syndicates, whose dictations in finance are im- 
plicitly followed, the President may easily become 
the dictator. Such is the record of the last ad- 
ministration, and the President may truly be said 
to have been the dictator whose reign was limited to 
four years. Then, ''by the will of the people," he is to 
be succeeded by an oligarchy whose power to further 
impoverish the people, and render them still more 
impotent to battle against the weapons of plutocracy 
four years hence, shakes all confidence in the ability 
of the people for self-government ! 

That confidence cannot be revived unless the pohti- 
cally ignorant, cowardly, and dishonest can be edu- 
cated up to a knowledge of what really constitutes 
their own best interests. These people must learn 
that their liberties are never safe unless they are in 
their own keeping. They must learn that the inter- 
ests of the rich are not in keeping with their own, 
and that the rich are keeping a sharp lookout for 
their own best interests. It is a simple lesson in 
politics that men's ideas of proper legislation depend 



NATURAL LAW 65 

largely on the nature of their own personal interests. 
If rich^ their ideas of proper legislation are in the in- 
terest of the rich ; if a producer, then in the interest 
of the producing classes and, incidentally, all other 
classes of the common people ; if a lawyer, then to 
complicate our laws and render it impossible for 
every man to be his own lawyer 5 if a politician or 
demagogue, why, always in the interest of the big- 
gest pull or the most "boodle" for himself. But it 
should be known that the most unsafe representa- 
tives of the people are from the ranks of the rich, the 
legal profession, and professional politicians. 

Now every voter knows what self-interest means, 
but many are too often short-sighted. The politi- 
cally ignorant think it is to their interest to give 
out the impression that they herd with the rich, 
although aU their interests are on a plane with the 
interests of the great common people. The cowardly 
through fear would rather run the risk of sacrific- 
ing their liberties than to risk being discharged or 
being otherwise temporarily thrown out of employ- 
ment ; or he may be a business man, and afraid of 
the boycott 5 a farmer, and afraid of a merciless 
creditor. But, whatever the occupation, he should 
bear in mind that liberty is priceless and that no 
sacrifice is too great to give in exchange for it. You 
may keep your position if you are a toiler, your busi- 
ness if you are a business man, your farm if you are 
a farmer ; but when your liberties are gone you will 
find that your employment is gone or your pay re- 
duced to the point of starvation, your store is gone 



66 NATURAL LAW 

because you could not compete with rich concerns, 
and that your farm is gone, like thousands more, 
into the great holdings of land monopolists. 

In one of his speeches, Patrick Henry, the great 
orator of the Revolution, said, " Give me liberty, or 
give me death ! " 

This is the pledge of the signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence : " We mutually pledge to each 
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." 
Pledged to uphold the declarations of liberty and in- 
dependence embodied in that sacred document, they 
stood ready with their lives, their fortunes, and their 
honor as a sacrifice, if need be, for the people of the 
colonies, who looked to them for deliverance from 
British oppression. 

'^ Sink, swim, live or die, survive or perish, I am 
for the Declaration." This was said by a patriot 
who urged the adoption of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. The prospect of losing property, honor, 
or life itself had no terrors for our forefathers, who 
preferred death to bondage under British rule. And 
yet British rule would have been no more oppressive 
and cruel than the oppression of plutocracy that now 
threatens our liberties. 

But what shall we say of the dishonest— the citizen 
and voter who will sell his vote for a few paltry 
doUars? What can be said in apology for a man 
who is so dead to principle and every instinct of 
manhood, so blind to his own highest and best inter- 
ests, as to barter away for a pittance the only safe- 
guard of his liberties ? Is it enough to say that he 



NATURAL LAW 67 

has sunk to the lowest depths of dishonor and de- 
serves the execration of all his fellows? Shall we 
add more and say that he is unworthy of the exalted 
privilege of citizenship and should be disfranchised ? 
Let me say that he should not be permitted to heap 
dishonor npon the sacred cause of hnman liberty. 
He should be hunted down and convicted of high 
treason against his country and banished forever 
from its shores. High treason ? Yes ; he has con- 
spired against every sacred institution of his country, 
bartering away to greater conspirators that which 
must affect the destiny of his feUow-citizens as well 
as his own. As the liberties of all depend upon 
the votes of all, so the ballot is not the exclusive 
property of any. A voter has the exclusive right to 
cast his ballot as he wiU, but when it is cast it is no 
longer his. It becomes the property of the State or 
nation, and is a unit of force which shall determine 
the character of government, it may be, for all time. 
A vote cannot contribute to the undermining of the 
liberties of the voter who cast it without contribut- 
ing to the same extent in undermining the liberties 
of aU other voters, including their wives and chil- 
dren 5 therefore should the sanctity of the ballot be 
preserved by the manhood of the nation. It is the 
imperative duty of every honest voter to urge that 
the safeguard of effective laws be thrown about the 
ballot, that will provide for the rigid prosecution 
and severe punishment of criminals who sell their 
votes, of worse criminals who buy them, and of all 
other criminals who have to do with falsifying elec- 



68 NATURAL LAW 

tion returns. These classes of criminals and con- 
spirators should be arraigned as traitors, tried, 
convicted, disfranchised, and banished. This would 
insure the absolute purity of elections. 

There is another large class of voters, who, in view 
of all the political perfidy that has been practised on 
the people in the name of party, should be classed 
with the ignorant. They are those who are led and 
controlled by the name of party. Every intelligent 
voter must know that parties are made up of men 
with leaders who are actuated by personal ambition. 
There was a time in the history of this country when 
to faithfully serve the people was looked upon as the 
first and highest duty of a representative, for which 
service he would secure the brightest honors. With 
the advent of combined wealth and the money power 
that principle has been supplanted by bosses, who 
control political rings that dominate parties for the 
spoils of ofiice. Money is now the dominant incen- 
tive in politics, as it is in everything else. In the 
early history of this republic offices often had to 
seek the men, whereas now the money expended 
to secure offices is as great, and sometimes many 
times greater than, the amount of regular salaries. 
Some office-seekers are rich and have no other desire 
to hold office than to dominate politics and secure 
legislation in the interest of the class to which they 
belong. Others see " boodle " ahead, and the num- 
ber who grow rich in politics is evidence that they 
reach the goal of their ambition. The number of 
faithful representatives of the people is now compara- 



NATURAL LAW 69 

tively few. Bosses and political rings have domi- 
nated the two old parties for a quarter of a century, 
gradually growing bolder in their methods until the 
presidential election of 1896, when both parties were 
practically dissolved. Both parties as they now stand 
retain the same old names, but national issues that 
have been maturing for years have forced them- 
selves upon the parties and have now become party 
issues. The Repubhcan party, that long since out- 
lived its usefulness, has become the party of plutoc- 
racy. The Democratic party, that had become the 
party whose leaders were in office "for revenue 
only," arose in the might of an outraged people, 
formulated a new alignment of principles made up 
largely of old ones that the party had long since 
abandoned, and emerged from political chaos a re- 
organized party with new leaders. Many " old line " 
Republicans and Democrats were forced to break 
party lines and at the election cross-fire with their 
ballots. These dissenters have found out for the 
first time that parties can change their leaders and 
measures and still retain their old names, and that 
it is not safe to belong to the name of a party unless 
one stands prepared to change along with the leaders 
and measures. 

It is to be hoped that the present breaking up of 
party lines will cause voters generally to be more 
independent and to decide once for all that they 
belong to no party. It is the duty as well as the 
privilege of every voter to advocate measures that 
promise liie greatest good to the greatest number j 



70 NATURAL LAW 

always reserving tlie right, however, to vote for what, 
in his judgment, are the best men and measures, 
regardless of party name. Just in proportion as 
voters renounce allegiance to parties and take their 
places as independent citizens, just in that propor- 
tion will they inform themselves on national ques- 
tions touching their own best interests. Let us not 
forget that the cardinal principle of a republican 
government is "the greatest good to the greatest 
number." This principle should be the political 
straight-edge of every voter, and by it he should 
draw the line on men and measures before casting 
his ballot. In this way he wiU be enabled to vote 
for the best men and measures. 

But in a representative system of government like 
this, with its packed conventions and political slates, 
it often happens that there is little real choice be- 
tween the men and measures to be voted for at gen- 
eral elections. Such has been the predicament of 
voters at presidential elections for the past twenty 
years. Gradually party distinctions grew less, until 
we now have the spectacle of a Republican adminis- 
tration ushered into power by the help of the out- 
going Democratic administration. It is needless to 
say that there will be no material change of the 
pohcy of the late administration. That goes with- 
out saying. And it is a matter of memory that 
there has been little change in the policy of admin- 
istrations for the past twenty years, notwithstanding 
there have been four changes of party name within 
that time. The whole tendency of them aU has been 



NATURAL LAW 71 

to administer the affairs of government in tlie in- 
terest of the rich, culminating in an unconditional 
surrender at the last election to that class. 

It is evident, then, that so long as we maintain a 
representative system of government, so long will 
it be necessary for every honest, ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ 
intelligent voter to be an agitator *^fauwes*s°pibVil:'''^ 
if he would aid in preserving the servants. 

Hberties of the people, which, of course, involve his 
own. In no way can a great reform be brought 
about except by agitation. Agitation provokes in- 
vestigation, and investigation leads to a correct un- 
derstanding of the matter under discussion. Every 
citizen and voter should be fuUy conscious of his 
power. He should know that there is absolutely no 
appeal from a decision of a majority of voters, of 
which he may be one ; that it is his prerogative to 
criticize what he considers the unjust policy of the 
President, Congressmen, or even members of the 
Supreme Court. These are all public servants, paid 
for their services by the voters, for which in return 
they are expected to render such services as are de- 
termined by the Constitution, laws, and their solemn 
oath of office. 

An appeal may be taken from the veto of the 
President to Congress and by a two-thirds vote of 
that body the veto set aside 5 a law, adopted by Con- 
gress and signed by the President, may be declared 
unconstitutional and set aside by the Supreme 
Court ; but by the will of the people Presidents are 
unseated, Congresses changed, and even the Supreme 



72 NATURAL LAW 

Court may be reorganized. Thus the will of the 
people is the great tribunal from whose decision no 
appeal can be taken. 

What power, what authority, what majesty, is 
vested in the ballot ! Then how wisely should its 
power, authority, and majesty be preserved ! How 
jealously should each and every voter guard its 
sanctity from every suggestion of intrigue ! How 
he should watch with jealous care this the only sure 
safeguard of his liberty ! 



BIMETALLISM. 

By bimetallism is meant the free and unlimited 
coinage of gold and silver at a ratio determined by 
both the ratios of production of the two metals and 
the demands of commerce and trade. 

Now I have made it the guide of my life to seek 
out the truth in all matters, and in public discussions 
to be sure that my conclusions accord with the truth 
before announcing them. I have found in all my 
investigations that the conditions and laws of nature 
form the groundwork of all truth. Error and imi- 
tation are the only things that are artificial. All 
art is imitation of nature; all error is counterfeit 
and is in conflict with nature. 

I am for bimetallism not merely because it would 
put more money in circulation, for, as I have shown 
elsewhere, if the trusts and market manipulations 
were not abolished, simply increasing the currency 
would do little, if any, permanent good. But I fully 
indorse bimetallism because it is sustained by the 
conditions and laws of nature. 

73 



14: .NATURAL LAW 

Now, reader, let us reason together and endeavor 

to reach the truth as we find it revealed in nature. 

Let us bear in mind at the outset 

''bimetaZm."'^ that every impression we have 
that is true, every correct con- 
clusion that we reach by reason, every idea that is 
founded in truth, has its counterpart in nature. 

Spiritual laws, or the principles of Christianity, 
are but the continuation of natural laws upon a 
higher plane. If there be God, — and surely no intelli- 
gent being can doubt it,— then is nature " God's oldest 
book." The laws and conditions of nature are actu- 
ated by intelligent purpose, and aU the possibilities 
of human intelligence and of higher civilization are 
absolutely dependent on the directing force of that 
purpose. 

Behind all civilization, aye, behind creation itself, 
is the intelligent purpose. God created, man dis- 
covers. All that man has accomplished in his grand 
march toward civilization, and all that it is possible 
for him to accomplish, is and must be the result of 
his discoveries. 

Going back to the Adamic period, and no matter 
which we accept, whether the accepted geological or 
the Mosaic account of creation, we find man in pos- 
session of nothing but possibiUties. He had the 
possibilities of expanding intelligence with which to 
explore the hidden resources of nature and appro- 
priate them to his various needs. 

When the earth was still wrapped in the swad- 
dling-clothes of chaos and night, before light and life 



NATURAL LAW 75 

had been spoken into existence, tlie germ of all 
future progress lay latent in the molten rocks, in the 
surging billows of the mighty deep, tossed by lurid 
tempests, and in the weird flame of a thousand vol- 
canic fires set against the midnight blackness of the 
upper and outer darkness, awaiting the calm, the 
open sky, and the quickening sunlight that should 
follow the Laurentian storm, when " God said. Let 
there be light." And after the light came life— the 
dawn animal. Ages and eons rolled in alternate 
periods of light and unfolding life, with succeeding 
outbursts of nature's vast developing forces, until the 
last storm of evolution was hushed, when, behold ! 
the earth was the fit habitation of man for all time. 
Man came, and since then sixty centuries of history. 
And now how vast the number of his descendants, 
how splendid the evidences of his progress and civi- 
lization ! How the earth and the air teem with life— 
vegetable, animal, human ! The germ of the possi- 
bilities of nature has surely budded and blossomed 
and gives promise of ripening into fruitage. Nature 
speaks eloquently to man of all her secrets and wisely 
through her laws ; but man hears little, heeds less, 
and rests self-satisfied in the delusion of his own 
conceit. Few have listened well, and they have 
strewn the pathway of our race-life rich with dis- 
coveries. 

Nature had possibilities in store for man of not 
only supplying his needs, but of material wealth 
ample for a hundred consecutive civilizations equal 
to that of to-day. And before man was, nature is 



76 NATURAL LAW 

pregnant with these possibihties. Behind the possi- 
bilities of both man and nature is prophecy -, behind 
man the prophecy of the development of practically 
unlimited mental, moral, and spiritual possibilities ; 
and behind nature resources and conditions that 
even now are only partially developed. 

The record of discoveries and inventions (and in- 
ventions are but discoveries) marks the events in the 
fulfilment of the prophecy that lies behind man and 
nature. Science is man's effort to theoretically inter- 
pret, and history is the record of interpretation of that 
prophecy. Mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, geol- 
ogy, and natural history all unite to form one grand 
theory of progress. We turn for evidence to the 
history of all that has been really discovered and 
practically demonstrated, and we are convinced that 
the theory is correct. All progress, then, is the 
fulfilment of antecreation prophecy. And this pro- 
phecy was laid in the foundations and superstruc- 
ture of the universe by a power directed by an 
intelligence as infinite in wisdom as progress is ad- 
mitted to be unlimited in possibilities. Starting 
from the premises that the antecreation prophecy 
was the work of infinite intelligence and that the 
progress of man and nature is the practical interpre- 
tation of the prophecy, let us now read in outline a 
brief sketch of interpretation as gathered from the 
history of man and the story of the rocks. 

Beginning with the advent of man in nature, we 
find that his needs were necessarily primitive and 
remained so until he discovered that nature held in 



NATURAL LAW 77 

store ior him more tlian a crude hut and a bare sub- 
sistence. Here began the great era of human dis- 
coveries. Iron, coal, and copper were discovered, 
dug out of the rocks, and shaped into tools, which 
were used to chisel stones for the purpose of building 
houses, temples, and altars. He discovered gold and 
silver and used them to adorn the temples he had 
built and for personal ornament. He also conceived 
the idea of giving gold and silver a valuation, which 
was necessarily reckoned in measurable quantities 
with reference to the measurable quantities of com- 
modities and articles of general use. This has been 
the basis of the valuation of gold and silver through 
all the ages up to the present time. In time the 
measurable quantity of these metals became fixed, 
the ratio of valuation of gold to silver being deter- 
mined by the relative quantities produced. Thus 
the ratio at which the metals were produced deter- 
mined their commercial ratio. And this ratio has 
been approximately maintained until of recent years, 
when men, actuated by greed and assuming to be 
wiser than nature, demonetized silver. 

But let us go back to primitive man and follow 
him through his discoveries that have led him up to 
his present state of civilization. 

He needed fire, and he drew it from the flint. He 
needed weapons for self-defense, and he placed 
sharpened flints in the ends of sticks for spears. 
He needed houses, and he discovered iron, and with 
it he found that stone could be chiseled in shape for 
building purposes. After a while he discovered cop- 



78 NATURAL LAW 

per, and tlien he discovered a process of hardening 
it into tools of superior grade. And he discovered 
gold, silver, and lead, and a process of melting and 
shaping all the metals to suit his requirements. 

Gradually his capacity for the use and enjoyment 
of his various discoveries expanded, which in turn 
stimulated his desire and ambition for new discov- 
eries. Ships were built, cities founded, and liter- 
ature became the classics to which the greatest 
writers and authors of the ages since have turned 
for inspiration. 

We take a leap of centuries and find man rapidly 
advancing to a high state of civilization. He has 
discovered coal, steam, and finally electricity. He 
uses coal to convert water into steam, and apphes 
steam to ships and railroads. 

Electricity is made to convey thought with light- 
ning speed and to drive all manner of machinery. 
Continents have been discovered, great cities built, 
and he has put the whole earth in order for his 
use. 

This is a rough outline of man's progress, but it 
will serve to impress the force of my reasoning on 
the mind of the reader. We have seen that the dis- 
covery and use of the metals were indispensable to 
man's progress. Without iron and copper material 
advancement would have been impossible. 

And again, if iron and copper had not been stored 
away in the formation of the earth man would have 
been left without the essential elements of material 
advancement. But nature had them stored away, 



NATURAL LAW 79 

and that, too, in quantities to fill all the requirements 
of the most advanced civilization of all the world. 

So, too, with coal. Its practically unlimited de- 
posit proved the prophecy of the coming civiliza- 
tions, and made provision for the supply of fuel that 
would necessarily be required. True, coal is a geo- 
logical formation and is the chemical product of 
inundated forests^ but this does not weaken the 
evidence of the purpose for which coal was formed. 
That is determined by the perfect adaptation of coal 
to man's requirements, and in quantities ample for 
all his purposes. 

And looking back over the history of man's pro- 
gress, we notice that the purposes to which he put all 
the minerals as he discovered them, although now 
broadened in their use, have remained unchanged. 
Coal may yet be supplanted by new discoveries in 
the application of electricity, but it is certain that 
until that time it will not be defuelized. Iron and 
copper may yet be supplanted by the scientific 
formation of other metals lighter and stronger, but 
until that time they will still be put to the uses for 
which they were evidently designed and will keep the 
place assigned them by man from their first discovery. 

No metal will be thrown out of use except it be 
supplanted by some other metal or its equivalent. 
We may reach a state of civilization like that pic- 
tured by Edward Bellamy in " Looking Backward," 
when our present monetary system wiU be aban- 
doned, but until that time neither gold nor silver 
will be permanently demonetized. 



80 NATURAL LAW 

There is another standpoint from which we may 
observe that nature speaks for bimetallism. We 
note her indorsement from her 
^"risiS\'n°nat™re!^^" established Order of things, which 
is on the basis of two. By this I 
mean that the principle upon which the laws of na- 
ture operate involves two opposite conditions, which 
together produce effects. As evidence let us first 
take magnetism as a witness. The principle under- 
lying magnetism is polarity, which means two oppo- 
site points termed " poles," which are indispensable 
to and determine the action of magnetic force. The 
earth is now known to be a vast magnet having two 
opposite magnetic poles. 

The earth is made up of molecules, and it is by 
cohesion these molecules are bound together, the 
aggregation of which forms the body of the earth. 
Cohesion is magne'ism acting at insensible distances. 
That is to say, every molecule of the earth's body is 
a miniature magnet with opposite poles capable of 
mutual attraction. The attraction of molecules, or 
molecular attraction, is termed " cohesion " in phys- 
ics; in chemistry it is termed "chemical affinity." 
Hence we see that polarity, which means two oppo- 
site and unlike poles, is the basic principle of mag- 
netism and chemistry. 

Again, magnetism has two principles of action— 
attraction and repulsion. "Unlike poles attract; 
like poles repel." That is, if you bring two magnets 
near each other with their poles reversed they attract 
each other. If like poles are presented they mutually 



NATURAL LAW 81 

repel. Molecules, being miniature magnets, behave 
in the same manner when brought under chemical 
test. They attract or repel as their poles are unlike 
or like when brought into chemical touch. 

The atom is the last division of matter and pos- 
sesses all the magnetic characteristics of the molecule 
or the magnet. By magnetic attraction atoms unite to 
form molecules, and molecules unite to form bodies. 

And then we note electrical polarity, which is simi- 
lar to that of magnetism. Any apphance for gener- 
ating electricity has two opposite poles or electrodes. 
At one electrode the current is generated and, pass- 
ing in a circuit, returns to the opposite electrode. 

Now let us turn to organic nature for further evi- 
dence. Here we find the principle of propagation to 
depend upon what are termed the two opposite sexes 
—male and female. This order is maintained in 
the animal kingdom, and there is little doubt that, 
although not so apparent, the order of male and 
female holds throughout the vegetable kingdom. 
Among many plants it is known to obtain, and the 
scientific inference forces the conclusion that there 
is no break in the order of male and female in all 
animate nature. 

In the realm of mind and the conditions of nature, 
which form the counterpart, we note the character- 
istics of good and evil, vice and virtue, love and 
hatred, and so on through the long list, that might 
be indefinitely extended. There are two opposites 
throughout mind, matter and force. These we call 
the two extremes. There is a literal up and down 



82 NATURAL LAW 

with reference to the earth's surface, high and low 
potential with reference to electricity, and corre- 
sponding to this there are "the ups and downs of 
life/' high and low minds, etc. There are also " two 
sides to every question," except " the silver question," 
which is shown by this little book to be all on the 
side of bimetallism. 

I leave the reader to formulate the catalogue em- 
bracing all terms which designate the conditions that 
properly come under the head of the two opposites, 
and pass on to the consideration of the conditions of 
animal locomotion. 

While all animals are not bipeds, there is no ani- 
mal that is a monoped. Quadrupeds have two pairs 
of legs, and the " thousand-leg '' has his legs attached 
in pairs of twos ; but a one-legged animal is an un- 
heard-of thing. Monometallism is a financial system 
with one leg. I liken it to a man with one leg am- 
putated hobbling about on the other, endeavoring to 
do the work of a man with two sound legs. One is 
as unnatural and impossible as the other. The suc- 
cess of monometallism, no matter what the standard, 
is a natural impossibility. 

Again, vehicles of every description that can be 
operated successfully have wheels by twos. Begin- 
ning with the bicycle, we have the four-wheel buggy, 
carriage, and wagon, and the six- and eight- wheel 
locomotive. The unicycle has been invented, and 
serves the purpose of a vehicle about as perfectly as 
a single standard fills the natural requirements of 
a circulating currency. Everything in nature or 



NATURAL LAW 83 

meclianics designed to move successfully must have 
more than one point of support. The tricycle has three 
wheels and for this reason is not a popular vehicle. 
A body with one, three, or five movable points of sup- 
port is a mechanical possibility, just as a single, triple, 
or quintuple standard is a financial possibility ; but 
all alike must be unsuccessful because the princi- 
ple is not in accord with natural law. A mov- 
able body, animal or mechanical, to move with the 
most perfect balance and least friction, must have 
points of support by twos. The circulating currency 
taken as a whole is a movable body, and to main- 
tain a just balance and move with the least friction 
must have at least two points of support in the busi- 
ness circuit— one at the (producing) points where 
wealth is generated, the other at the great manu- 
facturing and financial centers. (See Explanation of 
Fig. 2.) 

There is no such thing as a magnet with a single 
pole. Break it up and each of the pieces will have 
two opposite poles. Break a molecule up into atoms 
and each atom will have opposite poles. In every- 
thing else nature endeavors to maintain normal con- 
ditions. She is endeavoring to teach man by the 
penalty of her laws the right way to live. Every 
punishment she inflicts is evidently intended for a 
lesson in natural law. We blame nature for many 
things when the blame should fall on ourselves. We 
are continually warned, but we are slow to heed. 

The reason we are slow to heed is not so much the 
result of our ignorance of natural laws and their 



84 NATURAL LAW 

penalties as that our propensities, lusts, appetites, 
and passions stand in our way. Nature teaches 
millions of object-lessons in temperance by the ter- 
rible penalties she inflicts on the intemperate, and 
yet the appetite or the groveling lust for pleasure 
blinds millions more to their fate, and down they go 
under the penalty of natural law. 

And so men are blinded by their lust for gold 
until, mad with the pitiless passion, they violate the 
laws of their own being, outrage the rights and lib- 
erties of others, and finally die, it may be, cursing 
God. In spite of all the sad lessons that nature has 
taught mankind for indulging their lust for gold, 
men will still make gold their god and defy nature 
to do her worst. Nations have fallen before the 
fierce ravages of greed because, in the madness of 
passion, men violated natural laws which govern 
human rights and liberties. 

Be not deceived ; nature has moral as well as me- 
chanical laws. Every natural law governing human 
hfe and action is a moral law. The letter of these 
laws means strict morality ; character and purity are 
given to those who implicit^ obey them. 

But there is no escaping the penalties for viola- 
tions of natural law. Wealth confers no special 
privileges under these laws. Multimillionaires may 
bribe legislatures, courts, and juries, intimidate and 
oppress the poor for a season, but they will find that 
nature has no more regard for them than she has for 
a tramp. She is, indeed, no respecter of persons. 
Instead of the penalty of exposure, cold, and hunger 



NATURAL LAW 85 

she inflicts on the tramp for improvidence, she places 
in the rich man's closet a grim-visaged skeleton to 
continually remind him that life to him is a disap- 
pointment and a mistake. He diinks the sweets 
from the cup that wealth places in his hand, and 
nature will not permit him to remove it from his 
lips until he drinks the dregs, which turn to gall at 
the last. 

The single gold standard, which is the legitimate 
offspring of lust for gold, is cursing this land with 
poverty, wretchedness, and dishonesty 5 but I warn 
the perpetrators of the infamous crime that nature 
holds them accountable and will vindicate her laws. 
If you pull down the pillars of state, the tumbling 
walls will crush you with the rest. My hope is that 
your political locks will be shorn by the voters of 
the country in 1900, and that they will forever after 
have the good sense to prevent their growth again. 

In this little and somewhat hastily written treatise 
I have endeavored to prove that the reforms de- 
manded by the reform element of 

*^ . Natural la\ws the 

the country are thoroughly m ac- true model for human 
cord with natural law. Drum- 
mond's ''Natural Law in the Spiritual World" was 
considered an innovation on old-established Hues of 
religious thought, but the author might well have 
broadened his title and discourse to have covered all 
the conditions of nature up to nature's Grod. The 
jurisdiction of natural law is unlimited. Man with 
all his institutions is as much under the direction of 



86 , NATURAL LAW 

natural law as are tlie plants and animals below him. 
Human institutions, if rightly framed, are copied 
from counterpart institutions of nature. Man has 
instituted a circular system of business and finance. 
The purpose of this system is to so regulate busi- 
ness, trade, and finance that they will work together 
freely and interchangeably, maintaining a just equi- 
librium at every point of the circuit. Now money, 
consisting of gold and silver in certain measurable 
quantities and fixed as the standard of values, should 
freely circulate from hand to hand in exchange for 
commodities and articles of use. 

The counterpart in nature is her vast system of 
cu'culation, in which there is no break or flaw. It 
is by this system that a just equilibrium of matter 
and of force is maintained. From this system all 
change is evolved. The circularity in the motions 
of the earth on its axis and around the sun causes 
the circularity of time measured by days and nights 
and the seasons. From the alternations of days and 
nights and the seasons all change is evolved, which, 
taking the form and nature of its cause, is circular 
in all its countless evolutions. (See Fig. 1.) 

Nature is truth and all her parts are truths. Na- 
ture has no straight lines ; she is a system of curves, 
circuits, cycles, and evolutions. A straight line is the 
line of error in thinking and reasoning— a tangent 
of a circuit of truth. The single gold standard may 
therefore be defined as a tangent of the circuit of 
business. 

In his system of finance man established a ratio of' 



NATURAL LAW 87 

values of gold and silver, and that ratio was copied 
from the balance-sheet of the relative production of 
the two metals, which indicated that nature had 
stored about sixteen ounces of silver to one of gold. 
The commercial use of the metals when on an honest 
basis of free circulation has proved that the ratio 
fixed by nature should be maintained. True, the 
relative quantities in the production of the two 
metals have varied at different times, but these fluc- 
tuations were due to sudden rich discoveries of one 
or the other of the metals, or to unjust discrimina- 
tions in favor of one as against the other. There 
is no question but that nature has, in the relative 
quantities she has stored in the earth, fixed the nor- 
mal and just commercial ratio of the precious metals. 

This must be true. She has fixed the ratio of 
other metals in the relative quantities she deposited 
in the rocks, which has been found to be the ratio 
of mechanical requirements. Of all the deposits of 
minerals coal is the most abundant. Unlike iron, 
lead, copper, etc., coal is consumed in its use, and its 
extensive use tends to exhaust the supply more rap- 
idly than does the use of all the metals combined. 

Nature has made free and abundant provisions for 
all the needs and requirements of mankind, and she 
has instituted over all wise laws, which, if observed, 
would develop a civilization beside which our own 
would appear, as it really is, a refined barbarism 
characterized by ingenious crimes and cruelties, 
The laws of such a civilization would necessarily 
conform to natural laws. Nature is systematic in 



88 NATURAL LAW 

all her laws and conditions, all her parts working 
together to secure the perfect harmony of the whole. 
The laws of such a civilization would duplicate that 
system which would secure national and interna- 
tional harmony. The intelligent principle rules in 
nature and so in a perfect human government. I 
would describe such a civilization as one governed 
by a few simple and fixed laws, with the certain in- 
fliction of penalties for all violations. Nature has 
but a few fixed laws, but they are so ordered as to 
provide for the working out of aU the details of her 
vast system. Let us instance the law of attraction. 
Wherever there is matter, from atom to planet and 
from planet to systems of planets, the law of attrac- 
tion is in operation. 

In a human government one law would not prop- 
erly restrain greed, which, under our present financial 
system, should be the fundamental 
'^itrSn?S-\r°eed?' purposc of laws. I cau scc the ne- 
cessity for the enactment of three 
laws, viz. : first, free international commerce, or free 
trade ; second, absolutely prohibit individual or cor- 
porate speculations in the necessaries and comforts 
of life; third, remove the cause and forever pro- 
hibit drunkenness. Such laws would make of this 
nation one of prosperous homes and a temperate 
people. They would cover the contingencies of all 
time, because they would shut up the fountain of the 
great evils that afflict society and government. All 
lesser evils spring from the sources which would be 
suppressed by the three laws named. "Man's in- 



NATURAL LAW 89 

humanity to man'^ is wholly the fault of defective 
laws and institutions of government. To remedy 
these defects is the solemn duty of this civilization. 

The world has never produced a class of men equal 
to the task. Our forefathers founded a republic with 
laws adequate for the time, but subsequent history 
shows their sad lack of foresight. Besides planting 
the war germ of slavery on our shores, they made 
no legal provision whatever for the control of greed. 
They had read history back to Moses, but in the time 
of victory for human liberty they seemed to forget 
that under no form of government could greed so 
flourish as under one of free institutions. The evils 
of Europe were introduced, fostered, and grew with 
the growth of the republic. The mistaken notion 
that individual liberty was more sacred than the 
welfare of the public became a deep-rooted and dan- 
gerous theory, which to-day lies at the bottom of all 
objection to legal interference with prevailing evils. 

But the task of freeing men from the grasp of 
greed is ours. No matter whom or how we blame, 
we face the living monster, greed, that has fattened 
upon the toil, gloried in the shrieks and moans of 
the downtrodden and oppressed, until he is mad with 
power. He now challenges— he soon will defy— in- 
terference. The question is, my fellow-voter, shall 
we submit ? Will we submit and be dragged down 
to a servitude that is more galling, more beastly, 
more heartless than slavery ? Do I believe it ? Do 
you believe it ? Yes ; every intelligent voter in this 
land knows that these words are true. What, then, 



90 NATURAL LAW 

hinders the needed reforms ? We all hope, and some 
of us even dare to believe, that they will come. We 
all long for relief from the body of this social and 
political death. We are weary of this nneqnal strug- 
gle, this godless, heartless scramble for— what ? Some 
for wealth, and others, the vast majority, for bare 
subsistence. Oh, the ceaseless round of drudge and 
drudge, with scarce a moment's respite from miser- 
able, debasing drudgery ! Turn where we will, it is 
drudgery : the rich man drudging his life out over 
his arduous, never-ending task as he bends wearily 
under the load that none but the rich know how 
to bear ; the struggling aspirant for wealth, who is 
bending every energy and sacrificing every spark of 
manhood to attain it ; the poor, on the farm, in the 
store or shop, toiling on, worn out, discouraged, and 
smarting under the lash of injustice 5 the poor in- 
deed, the toilers, employed and unemployed, a great 
army that is crowding and clamoring for bare sub- 
sistence—all, all lead a life of drudgery, all but the 
indolent offspring of the rich. 

Yes ; millions there are in the United States whose 
souls have long since been offered up on the altar of 
crushed and ruined hopes and blighted lives. The 
struggling legions of the homeless, helpless, and 
dependent ; the thousands of haggard and hungry 
tenement-dwellers and outcasts on the streets; the 
scores of thousands whose avocations are recounted 
only by the catalogue of crime ; the swarms of hu- 
man parasites, from the exceedingly minute ones, who 
subsist upon the weakness and depravity of their 



NATURAL LAW 91 

fellow- creatures, to tlie great ones, who prey upon 
all classes and conditions— these, I say, form a great 
part of our population, and these never feel the 
warm glow of a patriotic impulse. 

Oh, the desperate, heartless struggle for wealth 
where there is the shadow of a chance to attain it, 
the bitter, galling struggle for subsistence where 
poverty has set its dismal seal, and the woeful 
blood-curdling struggle for things under the protec- 
tion of human laws by those whose lives are branded 
by the curse of crime ! How awful the picture ! 
Cities reeking with poverty and the rottenness of 
evils and crime, villages and towns diseased to the 
very core by the blighting touch of greed, and the 
whole countr^^ staggering under her load of wealth, 
poverty, wretchedness, and rottenness. 

Problems? The future of our country presents 
nothing but problems. The government of the United 
States is a national experiment, 
the grandest ever known on earth. ^pat^fouim"'^ 
We are approaching the crisiswhen 
the success or failure of the experiment shall be known 
—when it will be determined whether or not the people 
are capable of self-government. I have had great con- 
fidence in the stability of our free institutions, but I 
confess that that confidence is waning. I greatly 
fear that national dissolution is setting in and that 
the corpse will soon be ready for burial. I am sure 
that if constitutional remedies are not soon admin- 
istered the world will be called upon to perform the 
funeral rites over the remains of a once glorious na- 



92 NATURAL LAW 

tion, that died from a complication of the diseases 
of greed, hoarded wealth, poverty, evils, and crime. 

The question is, who is to blame ? The round of 
abuses seems to be continuous, and when you touch 
one you touch all. The first cause is greed j then 
follow hoarded wealth, poverty, evils, and crime; 
and by repeating hoarded wealth comes next, which, 
in the order of succession, shows that crime lies very 
close to hoarded wealth and hoarded wealth to crime. 
Hoarded wealth, poverty, evils, crime, hoarded wealth, 
etc. Poverty on one side of hoarded wealth, crime 
on the other, and evils between poverty and crime. 
Take your pencil and draw a circle, then write the 
words around it in the order given above, the word 
" greed " being written at the center, and you will 
see the exact relation of the words to one another as 
applied to the political, financial, and social condi- 
tion of our country. 

It is a hard picture, but let me tell you, in all can- 
dor, it is drawn true to life. I have no interest in 
saying so if it were not so. But do you say that 
hoarded wealth is responsible for all the poverty, 
evils, and crime in the land ? I answer without the 
slightest hesitation that it is practically responsible 
for their abnormal development, and the national 
government primarily responsible for its creation. 
By legislation evils have been fostered which are 
formidable allies of plutocrats in that they impover- 
ish multitudes annually and fit them for the labor 
market, which, being overstocked, reduces the com- 
pensation for labor proportionally to the number of 
impoverished and dependent victims. 



NATURAL LAW 93 

As wealth accumulates in the hands of the few. 



the people become more grasping and corrupt, the 
weak go to the wall of poverty, multitudes drop 
through the pitfalls of evils, and hosts become crimi- 
nals in the corrupt and unequal struggle for spoils. 
This is a palpable truth, and the singular thing is 
that the few who control the greater part of the 
wealth of the United States do not see it. Why they 
do not see in the signs of the times ominous fore- 
bodings of popular discontent, the increasing labor 
leagues with their increasing numbers, and the 
destroying angel of anarchism with the resistless 
weapon of dynamite, is a great mystery. They 
know little of human nature if they take no warning 
from popular discontent, organized labor, anarchism, 
and dynamite. 

You say this is harsh talk. It is, but it comes 
from a patriotic and philanthropic heart. I can say 
with the poet, ^' This is my own, my native land." I 
have an interest in the perpetuity of our free insti- 
tutions that is interwoven with my heartstrings. I 
can stand in the brunt of the battle and bear the 
harsher tread of the iron heel for the sake of peace, 
but there are those who will survive me, whose bud- 
ding lives will blossom into youth and ripen into 
manhood, and whose future is as tendi-ils twining 
around every aspiration and hope I cherish. How 
it would grieve me if I knew their tender feet must 
tread a thorny path, and then, at life's high noontide, 
look through tears of anguish from crushed and 
hopeless poverty to life's setting sun, whose last 
raySj perchance, may fall upcn shackles and chains ! 



94 NATURAL LAW 

Yes ; I feel an interest in my country's welfare deeper 
than all tlie hoarded millions of earth could give, 
because I love our erring country, our liberties, and, 
it may be most of all, the little lives that some day 
will be without my protecting arm, my sympathy, 
my love, but must fight life's battles single-handed 
and alone. For the sake of these dear ties and the 
benediction of a duty well and faithfully performed, 
I strive with pen and tongue to have men— all men 
—think, that they may act wisely, nobly, and hon- 
estly in their relations to country, posterity, and 
their own best interests. 

I long with millions more for better times, but let 

us not be deceived by any one into believing that 

they will come about naturally. It 

A talk with voters, is to tlic interest of bondholders, 
stock-jobbers, and market manip- 
ulators to make us believe that they hold the destiny 
of this nation in their own hands, and that if they 
have "confidence" they will invest then- capital, 
which would make times good. Do not let them scare 
you with that word " confidence.'' It is a scarecrow 
to intimidate you, so that you will say nothing against 
capital, nor vote against its interest. It ought to be 
perfectly clear to every intelligent voter that if the peo- 
ple let capital have its way it will surely enslave them. 

And do not labor under the delusion that all the 
reforms spoken of in this little book can be brought 
about at a single stroke. Remember, reforms move 
slowly, A perfect government is certainly desirable, 



NATURAL LAW 95 

but we must remember that much of our voting 
strength is raw mat rial and will have to pass 
through a long educational process before it can be 
relied upon to vote right. I have touched upon 
about all the prevalent social and political evils, but 
this was necessary in following out the trend of 
natural laws. Nature is opposed to all evils, indi- 
vidual, social, and political. The evils that should 
engage the immediate attention of voters, however, 
are trusts, market manipulations, and the single 
gold standard. It is more important that we have 
a free market and free circulation of money than 
free coinage of silver. If we have a free market and 
free circulation of money we can get along and do 
business with less currency. Both these reforms 
are necessary, however, and should be pushed vigor- 
ously until the election day of 1900. 

Do not be afraid of being called an anarchist. Re- 
member that ridicule is the weapon of a weak and 
dishonest cause. In the late campaign every man 
who stood squarely opposed to trusts and the gold 
conspiracy was called an anarchist and repudiator. 
This is because the advocates of trusts and the sin- 
gle gold standard had no argument to offer in sup- 
port of the gigantic system of robbery which they 
were striving to fasten upon the people. They 
dared not come out openly in support of trusts, so 
these single-gold-standard advocates made a great 
outcry against the restoration of silver to its proper 
place with gold, and called it repudiation. The 
friends of free silver advocated reforms that strike 



96 NATURAL LAW 

directly at tlie vitals of plutocracy, and their oppo- 
nents called them anarchists. Is it anarchy for the 
people— the sovereigns of this republic— to justly 
criticize their public servants ? Is it anarchy for the 
people to criticize the unjust ruHng of the Supreme 
Court in the income-tax case, or to denounce unwar- 
ranted federal interference which was in ^delation of 
law ? Is the Supreme Court or the President or any 
pubhc servant above the reach of popular criticism ? 
Is the servant above his master ? Our Declaration of 
Independence says that this government derives its 
just powers from the consent of the governed. Ac- 
cording to this, every official in the United States 
derives aU. official authority from the people. Do 
the people grant to the Supreme Court the right to 
decide that the rich shall not pay a just proportion 
of expenses of the government ? If not, is it anar- 
chistic for the people to object to such a ruling ? Are 
all the millions of people who indorsed the Chicago 
platform by voting for Mr. Bryan anarchists ? Were 
all the representative men who composed the Chicago 
convention and formulated the platform anarchists ? 
Is Senator Teller, who walked out of the Republican 
convention at St. Louis because he could no longer 
stand with a party that would fasten upon the peo- 
ple the single gold standard, with all the injustice 
that such a conspiracy will breed, an anarchist ? 

Who are the real anarchists, anyway ? Herr Most 
and his followers are avowed anarchists, and during 
the late campaign II err Most was openly in favor of 
the single gold standard. 



NATURAL LAW 97 

What is the great cause of anarchy? It is the 
unequal distribution of wealth and the abuse of the 
power it gives to the few who acquire an unjust 
proportion. Are men anarchists who favor lawful 
measures for the restraint of the cause of anarchism ? 
Yet these are the kind of men the single-gold-stan- 
dard advocates brand as anarchists. Indeed, they 
brand every advocate of political reforms as an an- 
archist. Most of them are paid for their services by 
great reform- wreckers, who are also fortune- wreck- 
ers, home-wreckers, and life-wreckers. Pay no at- 
tention to their ridicule. As you stand for reform, 
be sure you favor none but just means for attain- 
ing it, and no matter how you are accused, you will 
know that you are not only opposed to anarchy, but 
to anarchy-breeding as weU, 

Let us stick to silver and gold, as not only the 
money of the Constitution, but as the money of na- 
ture as well. TeU the opponents of silver that in the 
support of bimetallism you have the unanswerable 
argument of nature in the philosophy of her laws 
and conditions, and the logic of all history of the use 
of metals, to sustain you. Tell them that, because 
you are opposed to the demonetization of silver, you 
are therefore opposed to repudiation. Demonetiza- 
tion of silver is the worst form of repudiation, since 
it repudiates the money of the Constitution and of 
nature. If they dare to say "53-cent dollar," ask 
them what the price of a silver dollar was prior to 
1873, and what happened at that date to reduce the 
price. Ask them if it is not true that aU the prestige 



98 NATURAL. LAW 

and power of Cleveland's last administration was 
used to degrade the value of silver. 

And this is a severely practical question : If the 
single gold standard will bring permanent prosper- 
ity to all the people and to the government, how 
comes it that from 1893, the date of the repeal of 
the Sherman Act, to 1896, both inclusive, the country 
experienced the most disastrous panic known to its 
history, and the government (the people) was burdened 
by a vast bonded indebtedness ? If, in reply, they 
claim that capitalists were intimidated by the free- 
silver movement and withheld their money from in- 
vestments, which precipitated the panic, ask them if 
that is not pretty strong evidence that capitalists 
have a corner on money. In fact, the evidence is 
conclusive. Look at it. By simply^withholding 
their money from circulation capitalists can precipi- 
tate a disastrous panic ! Disastrous to whom 1 To 
capitalists 1 Go and ask the farmer, the small busi- 
ness man, the laboring classes. They will point you 
to their wrecked homes and business, to a host of 
half-paid, overworked employes, and to a vast army 
of men and women in enforced idleness. Are capi- 
talists benefited by such a condition ? Why not ? It 
hastens the consummation of their desire to control 
the wealth of the nation. Continued long enough, 
the desire would be consummated. Having practical 
control of the money of the country, it is but a step 
to controlling its wealth. That step is easy— sim- 
ply withhold the money from circulation. Here is 
authority for this statement : 



NATURAL LAW 99 

'^ Fifty men in these United States have it in their 
power, by reason of the wealth they control, to come 
together within the next twenty-foui* hours and ar- 
rive at an understanding by which every wheel of 
trade and commerce may be stopped from revolving, 
every avenue of trade blocked, and every electric key 
struck dumb. These fifty men can paralyze the whole 
country, for they control the circulation of the cur- 
rency and can create a panic whenever they will." * 

Mr. Depew, being one of the fifty men, knew what 
he was talking about. And right here is the " nig- 
gah in de wood-pile." With the free and unlimited 
coinage of silver fifty men could not " control the 
circulation of the currency," and this would break 
up the great conspiracy to control the wealth of the 
nation. Capitalists would then find it impossible to 
precipitate a panic by withholding their gold from 
circulation. The business of the country can be con- 
ducted with silver (or silver certificates) in such an 
emergency, and no one knows it better than the 
capitalists. 

Every other trust is subordinate to the money 
trust, which may be defined as the single gold stan- 
dard. So long as that trust is legally secure, so 
long will all anti-trust laws be inoperative. I say 
inoperative, because I am not foolish enough to be- 
lieve that our representatives who are pledged to 
perpetuate the money trust (the single gold standard) 
would break faith with their constituents, to whom 
they owe their election. 

* Chauneey Depew, in 1893. 



100 NATURAL LAW 

But we are now promised a return of prosperity 
to the whole country. Glowing accounts are pub- 
lished in the newspapers of the revival of business 
and the active investment of capital. Thousands of 
idle men are reported to have been given employ- 
ment and everywhere the wheels of industry given 
increased momentum. Many people look upon these 
reports as the harbingers of permanent prosperity. 

Be not deceived. Permanent prosperity cannot 

be brought about by artificial means. Capital may 

intoxicate business and trade by 

^^^dYc^eptions!^*^^ the stimulaut of increased employ- 
ment of labor in factories and 
shops, large loans of money on farms, and by spas- 
modic investments j but when it is found that the 
producing classes of the country are too poor to 
purchase the goods and material of the factories 
and shops, and that capitalists have been trading 
jack-knives with one another, then will business and 
trade "sober up" and find their condition worse 
than when they were put under the influence of the 
stimulant. The statement that the permanent pros- 
perity of the country is entirely dependent upon the 
prosperity of the producing classes cannot be too 
often repeated. It is a statement of fact that every- 
body should understand, and none so thoroughly as 
the laboring classes. 

We cannot grow rich trading jack-knives. "Wealth 
must be first produced before it can be had. Money 
is not wealth. The ^dctory of "sound (?) money" 
has " restored confidence," they say, and now there 



NATURAL LAW 101 

is money to loan at very low rates of interest. WeU, 
suppose $500,000,000 are loaned and borrowed on 
the strength of the victory. Why, $500,000,000 of 
debt is saddled upon the people who have borrowed 
it, secured in greater part by mortgages on homes. 
Mortgages are the seeds of land monopoly, and land 
monopoly is the curse of any nation afflicted by it. 
The $500,000,000 goes into circulation, you say? 
Yes 5 but in time it goes out of circulation through 
the manipulations of trusts and other moneyed con- 
cerns. And so the moneyed classes loan the money 
and get it back, together with the land, when the 
mortgages are foreclosed. Start up the factories, all 
of them, in full blast, and how long will they run with- 
out purchasers 1 And how can there be purchasers 
when there is not money enough in circulation to 
transact the regular business and trade of the country ? 
Abolish trusts and put more money into circula- 
tion by the free and unlimited coinage of gold and 
silver, and then the people will cause the earth to 
produce wealth, and there will be active money 
enough to estabhsh a normal circuit of business and 
trade, through which products would pass to the 
consumers, and just equivalents in money flow back 
by return circuit to the producers. (See Fig. 2.) This 
is nature's method for restoring real prosperity to the 
country. There is no other method or device worth 
considering. Mark that ! 

Of all that is said and written of the effects of 
prevalent evils, we hear and read little of the worst 



102 NATURAL LAW 

and most threatening to the stability of our free in- 
stitutions. All interest seems to concentrate on the 

financial effects, which are noted 
°o™°oHtfJafevTfs!*^ ^^ busiucss failures, bankruptcy, 

and the increasing poverty of the 
many in contrast with the increasing wealth and 
aristocratic tendencies of the few. These unequal 
conditions are considered dangerous only in so far 
as they tend to undermine the liberties of the many 
and reduce them to a state of servitude to the 
few. 

In seeking out the causes, little attention is paid 
to the first great cause of the evil, which I wish to 
point out and discuss. That cause consists in the 
generally demoralizing effect which the unscrupulous 
business methods of the few have upon the public 
mind, backed an4 encouraged as they are by the 
executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the 
government. The effect of all this is the prevalent 
tendency among the people to copy the examples set 
by men in high places. People are prone to take the 
rich and powerful, or those who lead in the councils 
of the nation, as models, and to justify their own 
personal acts on the ground that their superiors set 
the example. 

And right here is the true beginning of national 
disintegration. No argument is needed to reinforce 
the fact that morality is the corner-stone and the 
foundation of all good government and society. 
When that corner-stone and foundation begin to 
crumble away, the loftier and more massive the 



NATURAL LAW 103 

superstructure of government and society, the more 
eminent the peril and destructive the effects of the fall. 

It has been so ordered in the very constitution of 
nature that man, the only element of her vast mech- 
anism that has the capacity to reason and the ability 
to choose, shall learn wisdom of her laws and choose 
obedience to them as the true guide of all his ways. 
However much he may ignore moral laws as non- 
essential to his prosperity, he will find, as he ever 
has found, that behind them is the stern executor 
ready to inflict the sure penalty for every violation. 
True moral law is natural law and cannot be violated 
with impunity. In individual cases the infliction of 
the penalty may not always be apparent to the su- 
perficial observer, who cannot see beyond the pomp 
and splendor that blind him. 

But there are those who stand too near the hearth 
and home of the rich and great to be affected by the 
optical illusion, which is but the creation of vanity 
in the mind of the far-off observer. Around the 
cold, proud hearth and home the wise student of 
human life sees no light, not even of joy or peace. 
Looking into the gilded palace of the king, he notes 
the fear and trembling of the tjrrant ruler and sadly 
says, " Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown." 
Vainly he seeks to find happiness where sincerity, 
friendship, and a lofty regard for the rights of others 
have no abiding-place. He knows that wealth, learn- 
ing, and the authority of office cannot take the place 
of these divinely human attributes. 

So a nation whose people grow deceptive, un- 



104 NATURAL LAW 

friendly, and immorally selfish is not only driving 
prosperity from its homes, but happiness as well. 
The people of such a nation cannot long be prosper- 
ous, and never happy j nay, not even intellectual in 
the loftier and nobler sense. Selfish, grasping greed 
cannot be truly moral or intellectual. Let a Wash- 
ington or a Webster be consumed by debasing lust 
for gold, and their great powers of mind would ulti- 
mately shrink to counterfeit statesmanship and broad 
cunning, such as characterizes much of what now 
passes for statesmanship. 

Let the ear be struck dumb to nature's heart- 
throbs and the eye be blinded to her grandeur by 
the hand of greed, and poetry and song are hushed, 
joys that swell the human heart to lofty raptures 
are flown, and science becomes the perverted slave 
of base and hopeless materialism. 

And so statesmanship, poetry, song, and science 
too, as man once revered it as "a psalm and a 
prayer," are fast dying in this land. The prophets, 
poets, and sages of old looked aloft when they com- 
muned with nature in prophecy, in song, in the wis- 
dom and eloquence of tongue and pen. Now we go 
with our faces to the dust, looking for cold, hard 
gold, as cold and hard as our hearts. We look down 
for gold, for all things we car. wealth, and, thinking 
of nothing else, we follow the trend of our sight and 
thoughts and go down, down to selfishness and the 
practice of mean deceptions, down to a low contempt 
for the rights of others, down to polite dishonesty 
and refined barbarism. 



NATURAL LAW 105 

The cry goes up from all over the land, Where 
are our poets ? Where are our philosophers ? Where 
are our statesmen? I ask, How can a poet smg 
when all about him is discord and maddening strife ? 
How can a philosopher be known when there are 
none to understand 1 How can a statesman lead the 
people out into the open light of liberty when all the 
hosts of greed unite to oppose and defeat him ? 

And literature? It has been more than a gene- 
ration since the decline in literature began. That 
marks the period of the general decline of moral and 
intellectual greatness. We have few great writers, 
because there are few great readers. Men have little 
leisure to read or think. The world is all too busy 
now for great writers, readers, or thinkers. The 
craze for accumulating wealth and the problem of 
bread and butter concern men more than high-born 
literature. Genius and great talents are bought and 
sold like so much merchandise. Everything must 
have a commercial value to have any value at all. A 
great discovery in science or invention is counted 
worthless unless it can be put on the market and 
sold. 

The greatest thing of the hour is the " almighty 
dollar.'^ To get it men will scheme, cheat, and lie. 
These are the elements of our latest business methods. 
Wherever these methods are successfully employed 
it is called " business." In money-getting the end 
justifies the means, no matter how dishonest or in- 
human the means to be employed. In much of the 
business dealings of the country neither fairness nor 



106 NATURAL LAW 

mercy are shown or expected. Most men are coming 
to believe that no man living is unselfishly honest. 
Suspicion is everywhere. If you point them to a 
man who, they are persuaded, is honest, they tell 
you he is a " crank.'^ This would be said of a man 
who would copy even the example of Socrates, to 
say nothing of that example which millions profess 
to be following— most of them, I fear, afar off. 

It is not doubted that people were once honest, but 
it no longer " pays," so they say it has been aban- 
doned. " It doesn't pay." " There is no money in 
it." " There is no longer any room in the world for 
an honest man," for they say unselfish honesty means 
poverty and starvation. 

Where there is no unselfish honesty there is no 
sincerity or friendship and no lofty regard for the 
rights of others. Where these are not, the seeds of 
anarchy are already sown. The great truth that 
'^ whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," 
is as applicable to society and government as to an 
individual member. Unless these seeds are destroyed 
we will ultimately reap anarchy and national ruin. 
This was the harvest of ancient Greece and Rome, 
and this will be the harvest of all nations for all 
time that, by first sowing seeds of poUtical decep- 
tion and dishonesty, encourage the people to sow 
broadcast the seeds of national disruption and ruin. 

The first seeds of anarchy that were sown in this 
country were in the form of political deceptions 
practised upon the people. It began long ago, but 
was checked from time to time by great statesmen 



NATURAL LAW 107 

like Clay, Webster, Jackson, and other copatriots. 
Finally the Civil War came and left its blight in the 
institution of a party that inaugu- 
rated a system of class legislation, ^^anarchy! °^ 
which resulted in the formation of 
powerful corporations, trusts, syndicates, and com- 
bines, which are now plundering the wealth of the 
people. 

It is needless to say that these institutions are 
the legitimate fruits of the high protective tariff. 
Under it our government has been one of paternal- 
ism to moneyed interests. While colossal fortunes 
were piling up for the manipulators of protected 
industries and articles of manufacture, labor was 
forced to organize against the unjust exactions of 
the tariff-favored emploj^ers. Still, labor voted for 
it because political leaders deceived it by the de- 
lusive campaign shout of '^Protection to American 
labor ! " Many producers voted for it because in the 
next breath these demagogues would shout, "Pro- 
tection to American products ! " Many a deluded 
business man voted for it because he was made to 
believe that his business depended upon " Protection 
to American industries ! " 

Meantime people of all classes paid as cost price 
on nearly all goods and articles they purchased the 
exorbitant tariff added to the first cost of manufac- 
ture, the profits on the labor employed in the fac- 
tories, and the added profits of middlemen. And 
the beauty of the great deception lies in the fact that 
the highest tariff was laid on the necessaries and 



108 NATURAL LAW 

comforts of life, while luxuries, such as none but the 
rich can buy, were almost exempt from the tariff 
tax. As a result of the tremendous profits derived 
from the tariff tax, protected interests were enabled 
to hoard vast sums of money, which has given them 
the control of the circulating currency, the markets, 
legislation, and finally the whole machinery of gov- 
ernment. 

To accomplish all this, the powerful trusts that 
the high protective tariff created have resorted to 
bribery, trickery, and fraud to secure further legis- 
lation favorable to their own interests. Emboldened 
by their success, they advanced a step further and 
secured the favorable ruling of the courts and finally 
the Supreme Court. Thus many of the political 
leaders of the country were corrupted and their use- 
fulness forever destroyed. 

Out of it all, complications arose, in the midst of 
which nearly all the leaders of the two old parties 
stood side by side. There was no longer an issue to 
separate them. It had been a fight for spoils, and 
there were no spoils for either side to champion the 
rights and interests of the people. So they joined 
hands, formed the great party of plutocracy, and de- 
feated the party of the people by methods and means 
which, if ever fully known and written, will form the 
darkest page in American history. 

Who wonders that corruption is abroad in the 
land ? I wonder that the people are not even more 
corrupt and less intellectual than they are. 



FREE TRADE 

I HAVE endeavored to show in the preceding pages 
of this little book that before the birth of the race 
nature provided for the needs and wants of the hu- 
man family for all time. This was done during the 
geological periods, when the crude material for soil 
was formed from the debris of the rocks, ground 
away by the action of the waters of the earth, lashed 
into fury by storm and tempest through the suc- 
cessive ages of disturbances. This debris was made 
into crude soil by chemical action, which first formed 
mold, then vegetation ; and after countless ages of 
decaying vegetation the soil, deep and productive, 
was evolved. During the periods of geological dis- 
turbances the mountains were thrown iip hy the ac- 
tion of subterranean forces, inundating vast forests, 
which by chemical change were formed into coal-beds. 
In the fissures of the strata of rock that formed the 
mountain-ranges nature deposited the metals— silver, 
gold, iron, copper, lead, and so on through the list— in 
quantities of each kind proportionally to meet the 
requirements of the human family during its race- 
life. 

109 



110 NATURAL LAW 

From the soil and the mines come all things we 
call wealth : from the soil aU food and clothing, from 
the mines coal and all the metals. Taking a glance 
over the earth's surface, we see that nature has fash- 
ioned continents and islands for the habitation of 
man. Of them all, we note that the American con- 
tinent leads in the vastness of resources— a continent 
capable of producing sufficient raw materials to feed 
and clothe the world. We note that it has the newest 
civilization and that its resources are only partially 
developed. 

Crossing the waters, we find the old civilization of 
Europe with a population crowding upon her deplet- 
ing resources. Her vast population must be fed and 
clothed, so great manufacturing industries have been 
founded for the purpose of conve:|ting the raw mate- 
rials of the soil into food and clothing. Portions of 
Europe are almost exclusively devoted to manufac- 
turing. Cheap labor, which is the natural result of 
her crowding population, cheapens the cost of goods 
from her factories to a point that almost precludes 
competition. 

Necessarily, then, England is a typical manufactur- 
ing country. Her people must be fed and clothed, 
and this the resources of the country will not do. 
The raw materials must be purchased of producing 
nations, and her people must earn them by toil. In 
no way can they be employed except in manufac- 
tories. Her limited territory and dense population 
compel this condition. 

On the other hand, the United States is a country 



NATURAL LAW 111 

of practically inexhaustible resources, wliicli are in 
tlie early infancy of development, and thinly popu- 
lated compared with any of the old countries. This 
is indeed a new country, with its destiny in the hands 
of its people, and upon the wisdom of their laws de- 
pends the greatness of that destiny. It is a nation 
where liberty is enthroned and where the people by 
the ballot wield the scepter of power. 

The people have ever been, and still are, ambitious 
to make this the greatest nation on the face of the 
globe. They have consented to legislation which 
they believed would be conducive to that end. In 
their pardonable desire to add to the greatness of 
our resources the greatness of a matchless civiliza- 
tion, they thoughtlessly adopted at least two mea- 
sures of whose results, if they had been more wise 
and less enthusiastic, they would have foreseen the 
danger. Briefly, these measures were the protective 
tariff and unrestricted foreign immigration. 

The first of these measures was enacted into law ; 
the other is a time-honored unwritten law. They 
are both force measures intended to compel the rapid 
growth and settlement of the country. In the ex- 
uberance of our national youth we were impatient 
for rapid growth ; populating the country by natural 
increase and restricted immigration was too slow. 
We had great resources and we needed a great popu- 
lation to develop them, was the logic of our impa- 
tience. 

It was apparent, too, that with our fabulous re- 
sources we could be commercially independent and 



112 NATURAL LAW 

self-sustaining. Accordingly, it was decided that 
this should be a manufacturing as well as a produc- 
ing country. This it could not be and compete with 
foreign manufactories. So tariff laws were enacted 
by which a tax was levied on foreign goods, the reve- 
nue accruing therefrom to be used for defraying the 
expenses of the government. 

With the accession of the Republican party to the 
control of the government, this tax on foreign im- 
ports became practically prohibitory. It was termed 
the " high protective tariff/' and is briefly discussed 
elsewhere in this book. 

My object now is to prove that both the unwritten 
law of unrestricted foreign immigration and the 
" protective tariff " conflict with wise national econ- 
omy. To do this it is necessary to go back to first 
principles— nature— and get our bearings. 

At the outset I ask, What is the basis of the broad- 
est national prosperity? Answer: A nation made 
up largely of producing classes, who find a ready 
sale for their products at a profit, is the most inde- 
pendent as well as prosperous. No man is so inde- 
pendent as the prosperous producer, and no nation 
is so independent and prosperous as one of prosper- 
ous producing classes. On the other hand, no nation 
is so weak and powerless as one made up of non- 
producing and consequently homeless classes. This 
is perfectly natural. Cut off from access to the soil 
and without means, a man is in dependent circum- 
stances. A nation made up largely of such men is 
in dependent circumstances. 



NATURAL LAW 113 

Witness tlie condition of England. If lier people 
were commercially cut off from all producing nations, 
the large majority of them wonld starve to death in 
a very short time. The people of the United States 
or any other producing nation can live indefinitely 
without international commerce. Our people pro- 
duce and manufacture much more than they eat and 
wear, and would finally produce one hundredfold 
more if there were more legislation in the interest 
of the producing classes and less to subsidize manu- 
factories and trusts. 

If it is clearly true that a nation of products, pro- 
ducers, and homes is more prosperous and inde- 
pendent than any other, then it necessarily follows 
that in a nation of resources all legislation should be 
directed toward that very desirable end. This being 
true, is it not equally true that the protective tariff 
defeats this very end ? In fact, does not all tariff 
legislation arise from a false theory of national eco- 
nomics ? Let us see. 

Suppose a poHcy of free trade had been adopted 
at the close of the Revolution and adhered to up to 
the present time ; what do you say, reader, would 
have been the condition of this country compared 
with what it is ? There is but one intelligent answer 
to that question, viz. : We would have fewer facto- 
ries and a vastly greater number of farms, fewer 
non-producers and homeless, and a greater number 
of producers and homes. Europe would have been 
our market for our products and raw materials. In 
turn we would have been a pui'chaser of her manu- 



114 NATURAL LAW 

f actured goods. Thus our farming industries would 
have been stimulated by the increased purchases of 
Europe, and our people would have saved the millions 
of dollars annually that they paid out as tariff on 
home-manufactured goods. 

As trusts and combines generally are the legitimate 
outgrowth of the tariff system, so the vast sums of 
money hoarded in our great banking institutions 
represent, directly or indirectly, profits resulting 
from the tariff tax. If, under a free-trade system, 
the balance of trade were in favor of Europe, it would 
aggregate but a small sum compared with the amount 
of money derived from the tariff and now out of cir- 
culation. And it matters little to the people where 
money is hoarded, whether in banks and vaults on 
Wall Street or those on Lombard Street. If there 
be a difference, it is in favor of Lombard Street, as 
in that event the money would hardly be used here 
as a political corruption fund. 

With free trade we would now have no trusts, syn- 
dicates, or combines controlling the markets and sap- 
ping the wealth of the people. There would be little 
monopoly of land, as every acre of tillable land in 
the country would be under cultivation, yielding 
crops at a fair profit to owners. Our cities would 
not be so large and there would be fewer towns, be- 
cause there would not be so many non-producers j but 
their people would be better paid, fed, and clothed, 
because they would not be overpopulated as they 
are to-day. 

Along with free trade there should have been a 



NATURAL LAW 115 

restrictive immigration law, prohibiting the landing 
of paupers, dangerous classes, and families with less 
than five hundred dollars. Much more under our 
tariff system has such a law been needed. Our labor 
is entitled to protection from pauper labor, and our 
people and free institutions from the danger of trust- 
ing hordes of illiterate and irresponsible foreigners 
with the ballot.* 

But what does nature say for free trade ? Listen ! 
She has a broader and a loftier patriotism than has 
man. Man provides for his family and his kind, 
but nature provides for all her children, and, like a 
wise parent, saves the best for the last. In the natu- 
ral course of events the eastern hemisphere was pop- 
ulated first and the western hemisphere last. The 
eastern needed the western hemisphere, and it was 
discovered. The resources of the New World were 
needed with which to feed and clothe the crowding 
population of the Old World. Civilization needed 
room in which to expand. As evidently decreed be- 
fore the world was that the whole earth should be in- 

* The following statistics, copied from the New York 
"World," show to what extent Europe has availed itself of 
the opportunity afforded by the unreasonable leniency of our 
immigration laws. It will be seen incidentally that the States 
named in the following list gave Mr. McKinley large majorities, 
which shows that his election was due to the foreign vote. These 
are the States, with their percentage of foreign population : 
Massachusetts, 56 per cent. ; Rhode Island, 59 ; New York, 57 ; 
Pennsylvania, 37 ; Ohio, 35 ; Iowa, 44 ; Illinois, 50 ; Michigan, 
55 ; South Dakota, 61 ; Wisconsin, 74 ; Minnesota, 76 ; North 
Dakota, 79. 



116 NATURAL LAW 

habited by the human race, civilized and enlightened, 
so we find here in the western hemisphere, in the over- 
flow, the promise of the early fulfilment of the decree. 

Behind the actions of every sane man are purposes,, 
though often misguided. Behind nature are pur- 
poses infinitely wise and absolutely infallible. These 
purposes are enacted into natural laws which are 
supreme over all. They are the great Magna Charta 
and constitution for the proper government of the 
race, perfect in minutest detail, applying alike and 
impartially to each and every individual of the count- 
less generations of men. If we interpret natural laws 
as they apply to national life without regard to the 
well-being of the race-life, we evidently err. Inter- 
national commerce and social relationship forbid it. 
We should approve the wisest methods for the usher- 
ing in of that golden age, ^' the brotherhood of man." 

With the international commercial and social re- 
lations that now exist, one civihzed nation cannot 
rise high in the line of true advancement independent 
of the others. Through these international connec- 
tions passes interchangeably the invisible spirit of 
the laws and institutions of each and all the nations, 
acting as an equalizer and tending to reduce them 
all to a common level. This is the result of natural 
law. We as a nation have been touched by the in- 
fluence of English institutions and customs, and we 
are establishing an aristocracy of wealth that fain 
would duplicate in this land the old institutions of 
English royalty and nobility. 

Catching the spirit of our free institutions when 



NATURAL LAW 117 

the early patriots stamped them with that nobility of 
character which, in contrast, cheapened and made 
mean the empty honors of lordly titles, English in- 
stitutions moved slowly toward the example of the 
ideal republic, and to-day the Queen is little more 
than a titled figurehead. All nations have moved 
slowly upward to catch us, and, alas ! we have moved 
downward to meet them in their upward march. 

There is individual hf e, national life, and the race 
or international life, and a principle that holds in 
one holds in all. A nation is an aggregation of 
individuals, and civilization in its broadest sense is 
the aggregation of individual nations. The former is 
a family of individuals, the latter a family of nations. 

I have devoted much of this little book to the dis- 
cussion of the weaknesses and wilfulness of the mem- 
bers of our own little national family, without regard 
to its membership in the great family of nations. I 
have tried to point the way to a higher national life 
by directing the individual judgment and conscience 
to the observance of natural law as the sure guide 
of all the affairs of state. It is now my task to fol- 
low the unerring trend of that law, which leads up 
to a loftier conception of human life. 

Going back to the natural law that enjoins free 
circulation of currency, we find that, if we adopt 
that law into the business and 

. , f^ . „ Natural law enjoins 

commercial airairs oi our own free trade, 
nation, we have no authority or 
precedent for drawing the line beyond which we 
may refuse to admit the application of the law. If 



118 NATURAL LAW 

the free, uninterrupted circulation of currency is en- 
joined by natural law as the true basis upon which 
business and trade should be conducted in this na- 
tion, then we cannot draw the line on the operation 
of the law between this and other nations with 
which we may have commercial relations. Now 
there cannot be free circulation of currency where 
there is a break in the circuit of business or com- 
merce. The tariff is a break in the international 
commercial circuit that joins this with other nations. 
The circulation of currency is therefore restricted 
to the volume of business transacted. 

Free trade means an unbroken international com- 
mercial circuit and consequently free circulation of 
currency. This is natural law. The reciprocal ac- 
tions between the vegetable and animal kingdoms 
are free. The wants of one are supplied by the 
wastes of the other. Now let us apply this law to 
international commerce. Our surplus raw materials 
are in a sense the waste of our resources. Other 
nations want them. They will give us the equiv- 
alent in money. Shall we follow the injunction of 
natural law and supply their wants ? England, we 
will say, takes our raw materials and manufactures 
them into goods. She has a surplus and therefore 
a waste. If other nations want them and will pay 
the equivalent in money, shall she supply their 
wants? Shall we violate the law by keeping our 
surplus materials (wastes), and out of them forcing 
the supply of our wants in manufactured goods at a 
heavy loss of national vitality by depleting our cir- 



NATURAL LAW 119 

dilating currency? What would you think of a 
natural law that would force a tree to supply mate- 
rial for its growth from its own waste, or force an 
animal to subsist upon its own waste ? This could 
be done only at the cost of the vitality of the tree 
and animalj just as the forced operation of the pro- 
tective tariff is at the cost of the depletion of the 
circulating currency and the consequent loss of na- 
tional vitality. 

It is evident that the protective tariff is a force 
measure, clearly in opposition to natural law, in- 
jurious in its effects, and therefore wrong. So very 
injurious are its effects that there is now little pop- 
ular sentiment in the country favorable to the high 
protective tariff'. 

In determining whether natural law has been com- 
plied with or violated by the operation of human 
laws, it is only necessary to carefully estimate the 
effects of their operation. This may be set down as 
an infallible guide : if there are injurious effects, 
natural law has been violated. So, in everything 
and everywhere, injurious effects prove the violation 
of natural law. 

And then, again, while free trade would make of 
this country an open market for European goods, it 
would in turn open to us the markets of Europe 
by the increased demand for oui* raw materials for 
manufacturing purposes. And we would receive 
larger benefits from free trade than would Europe, 
in that it would make of the United States a nation 
of homes. The market prices for products remain- 



120 NATURAL LAW 

ing as higli or even higher, and the cost of living 
materially reduced by the removal of the tariff, the 
profits derived from the sale of our products would 
make our homes independent and prosperous. Every 
acre of tillable land would be improved and culti- 
vated, which would more than quadruple the present 
wealth of the nation. Then the amount of money 
derived from taxation of increased wealth would be 
ample to defray the expenses of the government, 
which would supersede the necessity of the long- 
talked-of "tariff for revenue only." Naturally this 
is not a manufacturing, but a producing nation, and 
with the free circulation of currency and free trade 
the prosperous owners of its lands could well afford 
to bear the greater burden of taxation. Then, as 
now, money would be in the hands of those who reap 
the largest profits, which under free trade would be 
the producing classes. 

If Europe could furnish her own iron for manu- 
facturing purposes and furnish the manufactured 
articles to us cheaper than we can get them from 
home factories, the people would be benefited by the 
explosion of the various iron and steel trusts; in 
fact, the inauguration of free trade would put an end 
to trusts generally. If some legitimate industries 
had to be abandoned, others would open, promising 
greater profits. The field of industries would be 
wide enough for all and would widen with increas- 
ing population. Europe would be benefited and the 
United States would profit immeasurably by free 
trade. 



NATURAL LAW 121 

And why not Europe be benefited from our re- 
sources? The earth and the fullness thereof was 
given in trust to the human race. 
In the purpose of this splendid The brotherhood of 
gift is the problem of human life. 
The discovery of what really is the true mission of 
the race is the solution of this problem. Judging 
from the selfishness and inhumanity of man in all 
ages, it would seem that the discovery has never 
been made. It has been made, however, and the 
announcement has been before the world for nearly 
twenty centuries. We now hear it in the caU for 
"the brotherhood of man," sounding from every 
quarter of the globe. But the majority, blinded by 
a narrow self-interest, still rush madly on with a 
feeling of patriotism no broader than the inclosure 
of national boundary lines. The brotherhood of 
man, as I understand it, means the broadest patriot- 
ism and loyalty— patriotic in the desire to see the 
human family lifted up to a higher plane of civiliza- 
tion, and loyal to the boundless cause of human 
liberty. Our religion and our politics should be as 
broad as civilization. We cannot teach the doctrine 
of the brotherhood of man, nor exemplify it in our 
national life, if by our selfishness we violate the 
spirit of the doctrine. No man can truly believe in 
this doctrine and favor the protective tariff— a mea- 
sure that is founded in national selfishness and in- 
tolerance. Human laws should be protective after 
the pattern of nature's first law, which is self-preser- 
vation; not protective of greed, but of those who 



122 NATUEAL LAW 

need protection from the exactions and ravages of 
greed. 

In our zeal for the consummation of that golden 
age, the brotherhood of man, let us not lose sight of the 

pattern given us in nature's first 
imml JraUon. great law. Nor should we overlook 

the conditions that exist, which 
clearly define the bounds of the doctrine under dis- 
cussion. These conditions I will define as the con- 
tinental boundary lines, with the broad expanse of 
oceans between, and the color-line. The brother- 
hood of man does not imply the violent overstepping 
of these boundary lines. The violation of the first 
of these conditions consists in unrestricted immi- 
gration. The broad Atlantic separates us from the 
crowded population of the Old World. We are in 
no way responsible for the laws and institutions of 
the nations of the Old World, which breed paupers 
and dangerous classes. We have the right to pro- 
tect our people from these classes. Nature has pro- 
vided for such protection in the separation of the 
two hemispheres by a waste of waters that precludes 
an easy passage. It is our duty to maintain a per- 
petual moral, social, and political quarantine against 
the pestilences of pauperism, heathenism, and law- 
lessness. Nor should we stop at this. Nationalities 
of color who would come among us, with peculiar 
customs, religions, and habits, and persistently re- 
fuse to sever their allegiance to pagan laws and in- 
stitutions and become citizens, should be prohibited 
by law from landing on our shores. We have the 



NATURAL LAW 123 

right and it is our duty to protect our people from 
the influx of heathens who not only refuse to become 
citizens, but refuse even to leave buried here the 
bones of their dead. 

Neither does the brotherhood of man imply a vio- 
lent breaking up of color-lines by amalgamation. 
These lines are drawn for a purpose unknown to us, 
but evidently not to be effaced, especially by the un- 
natural process of amalgamation. 

But there should be between nations and peoples 
a grand unity or brotherhood of interests. Let the 
gospel be preached to heathens in heathen lands ; let 
the seeds of human liberty be sown and cultivated 
in every land ; but let us be sure that in religious or 
political missionary work we invite no curse to enter 
our own land. There is a Christian brotherhood 
that goes out to the slums and dives of our great 
cities and persuades the fallen inmates to renounce 
their lives of shame ; but if, unwisely, those moral 
lepers, unwashed and unclean, were persuaded to 
enter family circles, the very atmosphere of those 
homes would be poisoned by the deadly contagion 
of sin and vice. 

So we should refuse to admit to the family circle 
of this nation the ignorant paupers, the dangerous 
classes, or hordes of heathens who will not renounce 
their heathen customs and habits to become citizens. 
For my own part, I have no patience with impractical 
and visionary enthusiasts who see in the brother- 
hood of man the indiscriminate intermingling of all 
classes, conditions, races, and colors. 



124 NATURAL LAW 

There should be a grand international brotherhood 
of interests, free from jealousies and prejudices. All 
nations should be governed by a broad international 
statesmanship, graduated from the school of natu- 
ral law. Such statesmanship would inaugurate and 
maintain free international commerce, with open 
markets and free circulation of currency. Under 
such a system international trade relations would be 
reciprocal— the wants of one nation supplied by the 
surplus (wastes) of another. Some nations are by 
nature adapted to the supply of resources to other 
nations smaller and more densely populated. These 
are adapted to manufacturing. The products of no 
two nations are alike, owing to difference of climate 
and soil. By the unobstructed interchange of re- 
sources each nation could be supplied with what an- 
other produces, which would form a perfect circuit 
of exchange. And from all these resources manu- 
facturing nations could get their supplies and in turn 
furnish all with the products of their factories. 

Thus the whole national and international machi- 
nery of business, trade, and commerce would work in 
harmony with natural law. And if in harmony with 
natural law, then no argument is needed to prove 
that the operation of the system would in every way 
be conducive of the highest results. This grand sys- 
tem would distribute wealth more equalty, and in 
the place of titled royalty and moneyed aristocracy 
there would be royalty of character and aristocracy 
of brains. 



GOD IN NATURE 

It may be safely estimated that fully ninety per 
cent, of all the misery and suffering in the world are 
due, either directly or indirectly, to violations of 
natural law, while all the poverty, want, and desti- 
tution are due to that cause. Misery and suffering 
in nearly all cases result from violations of the laws 
of health, which are a part of natui-al law. Poverty, 
want, and destitution are the results of the opera- 
tion of human institutions of society and govern- 
ment which are founded and perpetuated in viola- 
tion of natural law. These institutions alone are 
responsible for "man's inhumanity to man" in aU 
ages. Let these institutions be founded in natural 
law and there would be an end to poverty, want, and 
destitution. Aye, more : there would practically be 
an end to vice and crime. Then let the laws of 
health be observed by all mankind, and I verily be- 
lieve the whole world could with one accord look 
with me " through nature up to nature's God." 

Thus the simple obedience to natural law by all 
mankind would bring to them abundant peace, hap- 
piness, and prosperity, and, by removing all the evils 
125 



126 NATURAL LAW 

whicli the human family inflicts npon itself, would 
effectually silence atheism and all unwarranted com- 
plaint and scoffing at God's mercy. When man 
comes to fully realize that by his own inventions 
and devices, led on by a sordid selfishness, he has 
heaped upon himself all the evils which scourge and 
afflict humanity, then will he recognize the great 
truth of man's free agency. When this truth dawns 
on his mind the other great truth— that natural laws 
are instituted for his guidance, and that he is endowed 
with a moral and intellectual nature by which he 
may comprehend them, and with a will which should 
determine his obedience to those laws— will flash 
resplendent upon his manhood, and he will see that, 
whereas he was made ^' a little lower than the angels," 
he is also capable, by the moral latitude of his free 
agency, of falling a little lower than the beasts. 

If you tell me of inherited diseases of body and 
mind that are constitutional, for which the victims 
and sufferers are in no way responsible, I will refer 
you to the great natural laws of heredity, and call 
upon you to witness that in all such cases the world 
over and for all time these laws have been violated. 
And when I contemplate the manner in which the 
majority of the human family have lived and con- 
tinue to live, in open violation of the natural laws 
of heredity, I wonder that constitutional infirmities 
of body and mind are not more common and marked 
than they are. Indeed, when I realize that for all 
time past and present the human family has obeyed 
so little and violated so much of natural law in the 



NATURAL LAW 127 

practical workings of institutions of society and gov- 
ernment and of heredity, the wonder to me is that 
there are any who are physically and mentally sound, 
and that there are even a few who can be said to be 
both intellectually and morally great. 

To my mind, if there were no evidence of God in 
nature other than the moral trend of natural law, 
this evidence alone would be conclusive. But when 
we couple with this the possibilities of God in man 
as typified by the life and character of men and 
women who have risen to grand intellectual and 
moral heights, rising upward higher and higher and 
culminating in One who was the physical embodi- 
ment of divine attributes, then the evidence of God 
in nature is sufficient to overwhelm all the deduc- 
tions of sophistry for all time past and to come. 

"Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle sug- 
gestion is fairer ; 

Rare is the rose-burst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it 
is rarer ; 

Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it 
is sweeter ; 

And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered 
the meter. 

"Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the grow- 
ing; 

Never a river that flows, but a majesty scepters the flow- 
ing; 

Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did 
enfold him ; 

Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath fore- 
told him. 



128 NATURAL LAW 

"Back of tlie canvas tliat throbs the thought of the painter 
is thrilling ; 

Out from the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor 
is breathing; 

Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling ; 

Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the re- 
vealing. 

"Great are the symbols of being, but that whnjh is symboled 

is greater ; 
Vast the creation beheld, but vaster the inward creator ; 
Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands 

the giving; 
Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of 

receiving. 

''Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the 

doing ; 
The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the 

wooing ; 
And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the 

heights where those shine, 
Twin voices and shadow'd swim starward, and the essence 

of life is divine." 



tS 81 



**.< 




